| Summary: | Post-disaster outages of lifeline utilities such as electricity and water have
substantial impacts on regional economic activity, and mitigation efforts should be
continued to reduce the duration and extent of these outages. The Los Angeles Lifelines
project seeks to model these outages and their recovery in the context of the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power. Informing this modeling process are
performance objectives that utility providers may seek to attain in disaster response.
This professional project sought to determine the appropriate format and substance of
these objectives.
A targeted survey of 18 key stakeholders in Los Angeles was conducted via
email, addressing types of stakeholders to include in the definition of performance
objectives, appropriate means of framing the objectives, communication of these
objectives, considerations in disaster-related decision-making, views of utility providers
versus users, and possible challenges in the definition and use of performance
objectives.
The survey concluded that a wide variety of stakeholders should be involved in
the definition of performance objectives; that objectives should be flexible and contextspecific,
and in the format of “service recovery to critical facilities or 90% of the
population within a specified timeframe.” There was found to be more consensus related
to performance objectives for moderate than catastrophic disasters. Other findings
included that a few scenarios of varying likelihood were the most helpful means of
presenting uncertainty, and that the most effective means of communication were
websites and print material. A reduction in outage to critical infrastructure, as well as a
reduction in overall outage time were identified as priorities for decision-making. Utility
providers consistently set less stringent performance objectives than users, although
both agreed regarding decision-making priorities, stakeholder involvement, and
information sharing.
Although there are uncertainties in the data due to methodological limitations,
data from this survey can better enable the L.A. Lifelines model to assist in the definition
of performance objectives, resulting in a Los Angeles that is better prepared to respond
in the event of a disaster.
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