Social vulnerability analysis of planned power outages: A spatial study of power outage in California caused by wildfire risk

Abstract

Public safety power shutoff (PSPS) has become an effective and commonly utilized strategy for mitigation of wildfire threats to safe operations of power systems. PSPS aims to cut down the supply of electricity for one area that has high wildfire risks to avoid the occurrence of fires sparked by power devices. However, vulnerable populations who depend on the availability of electricity have been ignored when PSPS decisions were made. To bridge this gap, this paper conducts a comprehensive social vulnerability analysis of the planned power outages in California, where diverse social factors including socioeconomic status, race and gender, community and neighborhood, and health, are considered. In addition to the traditional hierarchical and inductive social vulnerability index (SVI) methods, this study further employs a PCA-AHP (integrated principal component analysis and analytical hierarchical process) SVI method, incorporating expert knowledge in the computation of overall SVI, because people with health issues are suggested to be more vulnerable during the loss of electricity period. The results reveal spatial patterns of vulnerable social groups in historically impacted PSPS areas and suggest that PCA-AHP is a more informed and equitable PSPS decision-making process by integrating social vulnerability analysis, mitigating wildfire risks, and protecting the safety of power systems.