Equity-Integrated Infrastructure Resilience Analysis: Case Studies of Florida Communities

To mitigate the impacts of climate change on infrastructure, there has been a growing trend toward adopting resilience strategies in infrastructure planning. However, research highlights historical discriminatory practices and biases in policies and investments, resulting in disproportionate disaster impacts on communities. To effectively evaluate infrastructure resilience, it is crucial to consider these disparities. To address this need, this study focuses on assessing infrastructure resilience while incorporating disaster inequality and disaster vulnerability using a proposed equity-integrated resilience evaluation model. The resilience of infrastructure in Florida counties with different characteristics (e.g., spatial, demographic, and socioeconomic statuses) was evaluated and compared. The findings reveal that (1) the more socially vulnerable counties experienced greater disaster inequality, (2) there is a higher percentage of disaster vulnerable counties in the rural group in high-intensity hurricanes, and (3) the infrastructure of the inland counties, collectively, has weaker resilience compared to coastal ones.