Social Vulnerability in the Context of Water Infrastructure Management

Aging infrastructure jeopardizes the safe and efficient delivery of critical services, such as water, transportation and flood management. Cities across the globe are not able to keep up with the pace of crumbling infrastructure and must prioritize the replacement and maintenance of certain assets within available budgets. The lack of resources and mismanagement can have dire consequences, as seen in the cases of water contamination in Walkerton, Ontario and Flint, Michigan. Although strategies exist to manage risks of critical infrastructure failure, they do not fully account for social vulnerability. A review of social vulnerability indices indicates that they are largely applied to better understanding risks related to natural and manmade disaster. More recent studies have also focused on the vulnerabilities amplified by the covid-19 pandemic. This attention on acute, urgent and episodic events can be explained by the greater media and policy attention they receive. However, routine risks as caused by infrastructure deterioration generate substantial economic and health consequences and need to be addressed. Infrastructure failure has been found to disproportionately impact marginalized communities. While certain studies frame infrastructure vulnerability as a dimension of social vulnerability, separating these two concepts can enable a better understanding of the feedback loops between social and infrastructure vulnerability. Accordingly, a layered vulnerability approach is proposed. Five key recommendations are made for developing a social vulnerability framework and index to be applied in water infrastructure management decision-making.