Resilience By Design: Advanced Metrics and Comprehensive Methods for Energy-Water Systems Analysis

This white paper examines the connections between energy and water systems, highlighting the need for thorough resilience analyses and interdisciplinary metrics in these sectors. It addresses challenges stemming from the growing interdependence and uncertainty in decision-making due to resource variability, increasing demand, and technological advancements. The paper critiques current resilience assessments for isolating systems and neglecting cascading impacts and multi-sector interactions. It presents near-term opportunities for advancing integrated approaches that combine resilience measurement with decision-support frameworks. This resilience-focused approach could benefit various use cases, including (but is not limited to and is not exhaustive) multi-sector drought impact assessments that consider interactions among different users (e.g., power, agriculture); optimizing hydropower operations during extreme weather events to enhance efficiency and co-benefits; and evaluating non-traditional water sources for increasing energy demands (e.g., data centers), particularly in the context of reuse and desalination. Success measures will concentrate on developing transferable, comparable, and robust metrics for assessing energy-water resilience (EWR), aiming to demonstrate the value of these metrics across different scenarios to encourage broader adoption in EWR analyses. Lastly, by viewing resilience as a dynamic property that encompasses everything from threat representation to performance outcomes, we can promote integrated strategies and collaboration across sectors. This approach has the potential to benefit utilities, federal and regional partners in both the energy and water sectors, as well as industries that depend on energy-water interactions (e.g., agriculture, data centers, mining).