To what extent is electricity central to resilience and disaster management of the built environment?

Kinn, Moshe ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2641-4837 and Abbott, Carl (2014) To what extent is electricity central to resilience and disaster management of the built environment? In: 4th International Conference on Building Resilience, Incorporating the 3rd Annual Conference of the ANDROID Disaster Resilience Network, 8 September 2014 - 10 September 2014, Manchester, UK.

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Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to establish two key points. Firstly that there is a gap in the resilience literature, and to show that electricity needs to play a more central role in all the academic research fields associated with ‘disasters’ and ‘resilient cities’. Design/methodology/approach Two approaches were used, database interrogation and establishing areas of expertise in the resilience and disaster case study literature. Firstly a database search was carried out, and the ‘keyword’ and ‘abstract’ fields searched for electricity related words. Then academic papers, and reports by public bodies were analysed to establish which academic disciplines are most active in this area of research. Findings This paper shows; that only 3.9% of the 4127 papers analyzed, had key words connected to electricity, and that there is not a specific discipline within the resilience literature looking explicitly at how electricity effects the built environment. Research implications This paper implies that the role of electricity, in the academic literature associated with resilience, is under represented. A future research agenda should be developed that more adequately reflects the importance of electricity to the resilience of the built environment. Practical implications With more focused research, into how the loss of electrical energy affects all aspects of life during and post disaster, better approaches to disaster risk reduction and management can be formulated. Originality/value This paper is the first to analyses the literature to understand how important the continuity of electrical supply is to the resilient-cities and disaster management academic communities, and has highlighted this theme as a gap in the literature.