Developing Utility Assistance Community Resilience Networks in Maricopa County

Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER) is an effort at Arizona State University to integrate resilience data collected from community stakeholders, social media, citizen science, and local and federal authoritative organization to identify and mitigate resilience threats to Maricopa County of Arizona, USA. One current KER research focus centers on resilience to urban heat by exploring individual heat exposure and utility assistance needs. We are building a utility assistance community network among utility assistance providers and applicants in Maricopa County of Arizona in order to understand and evaluate urban heat resilience from a social capital perspective. The network consists of three integrated layers: 1) collaboration networks among utility assistance providers; 2) local community networks among those applicants; 3) utility assistance networks between utility assistance providers and those applicants. We will further relate the network framework to the built environment and configuration of the landscape, including tree cover, surface temperature, house price, and transportation mode, which may also contribute to community social capital. We expect that the proposed network would provide insights into social vulnerabilities of the individuals who apply for utility assistance and potential solutions for those utility providers to assist vulnerable populations.