Community and Crisis: A Multiscale Analysis of Drinking Water Infrastructure Resilience in the Face of Slow-Onset Disasters

Abstract

Disasters can disrupt drinking water infrastructure by negatively impacting its planning, managerial, and operational components. Furthermore, detrimental impacts may vary along with the resilience of drinking water infrastructure across the United States, posing additional risks to communities pre-existing infrastructure issues due to historical and sociodemographic considerations. This dissertation examined how different slow-onset disasters impacted drinking water infrastructure and what implications this posed on the marginalized communities served by the infrastructure. This dissertation explores this interaction at various magnitudes. First, I used the qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews to determine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on small water utilities and how these impacts differed from large water utilities across the country. Second, I examined the successful and failed project attributes of drinking water projects and systems in rural Alaskan communities using interviews with a variety of stakeholders involved with drinking water in the state. Lastly, I used geospatial and statistical techniques to explore associations between historic redlining distinctions and contemporary drinking water infrastructure at a city-level. Each exploration demonstrated that the relationship between slow-onset disasters, drinking water infrastructure, and marginalized communities provides indications to understanding the history of various inequities while determining areas of improvement for resilient systems. This dissertation contributes to the literature by providing additional avenues for including systems thinking, resiliency, and disaster approaches in drinking water infrastructure research. Additionally, it supplies practical suggestions for enhancing drinking water infrastructure in the pursuit of infrastructure justice.