Energy-Water System Resilience to Flooding

This white paper addresses the resilience challenges and opportunities within interdependent energy-water systems, particularly under the stress of flooding events. It describes how large-scale flood events impact these systems, posing risks such as operational constraints, infrastructure damage, and service disruptions. When energy and water systems are highly dependent, disruptions in one system can propagate into the other, compounding overall impact and reducing resilience.

Key challenges include existing gaps in data acquisition, hazard modeling, and consequence assessment. Flood hazards vary significantly by region, and the operational constraints for water management systems differ based on the types of services provided (e.g., hydropower, potable water, agriculture). Large basins such as the Columbia or Colorado Rivers face vulnerabilities tied to weather, asset failure, or external threats, which push systems into less-characterized operational requirements. A lack of historical data on these extreme events underscores the need for improved modeling and simulation tools to guide resilience planning. Moreover, translating the uncertainty associated with flood risk assessments into actionable operational decisions is a significant hurdle for hydropower producers and water managers. Resilience measures for energy-water systems range from infrastructure hardening, such as flood barriers and pump systems for energy assets, to improved mutual aid agreements and recovery strategies. However, existing tools and approaches often fail to account for secondary impacts, such as disruptions to energy services that affect populations and businesses. Resilience gaps are exacerbated by insufficient data characterizing flood hazards and the lack of reliable probabilistic risk assessments. Traditional approaches reliant on probable maximum flooding fail to capture uncertainty, joint threat distributions, and spatially variable exceedance probabilities, limiting their effectiveness for comprehensive risk analysis and resilience planning.

Near-term opportunities for enhancing energy-water system resilience include 1) Advanced Warning Systems and Monitoring; 2) Uncertainty-Informed Flood Risk Maps; 3) Flood Protection Technologies for Energy Assets; 4) Publicly Accessible Flood Impact Data; and 5) Innovative Resilience Design Tools

Success in addressing vulnerabilities would be evident through enhanced preparedness and operational strategies, greater understanding of system interdependencies, increased adoption of updated design standards informed by new data, and improved early warning systems. Metrics of success would include high-resolution flood hazard datasets, reduced damage to energy systems, demonstrated stakeholder engagement, and fewer unplanned outages following flood events.

Improving resilience to flooding requires bridging technical and data gaps while prioritizing a probabilistic approach that accounts for uncertainty and the complexity of interdependent energy-water systems. Advances in modeling, flood protection technology, and recovery datasets can support more robust planning and response mechanisms. Ultimately, the ability to minimize disruptions and adapt quickly to low-frequency, high-impact flooding events will define success in achieving energy-water system resilience.