A metric to support higher-resolution equity-based infrastructure prioritization

Infrastructure prioritization is critical for infrastructure interventions limited by various constraints. The resolution of interest for infrastructure prioritization varies but is often needed at higher resolutions. As equity considerations increasingly enter the decision-making paradigm, prioritization tools are needed to accommodate an equity-based prioritization paradigm at higher resolutions. Existing equity metrics primarily provide single community wide terms for overall assessment. Therefore, this work presents an equity-based prioritization framework with a metric derived from the individual Theil’s T, an equity measure, which enables evaluation at higher resolution infrastructure divisions commonly utilized. The framework is demonstrated for restoration prioritization in a simplified case for Lumberton, NC’s electric distribution network. Outage impact is the selected scarce resource with multiple definitions – tolerance, hardship, and burden – investigated with no consensus on characterization. The equity-based prioritization with individual Theil’s T is compared to a conventional population-centric prioritization and a mean scarce resource-based prioritization. The mean scarce resource-based prioritization is implemented to investigate whether individual Theil’s T metric or scare resource definitions lead to divergent prioritization. The equity-based prioritizations diverge from the conventional method with a roughly complete reversal in prioritization when comparing the approaches. Prioritization variation also occurs between scarce resource definitions, yet to a smaller degree than variation between approaches. Further investigations for a proper scarce resource definition and implementation alongside other conventional decision criteria is necessary. Ultimately, this implementation demonstrates the metric’s ability to support high-resolution infrastructure prioritization from an equity-based paradigm.