INFRASTRUCTUREQ&A with the Experts: Puerto Rico
In 2018, as part of an effort to improve Puerto Rico’s resilience in the face of repeated, and devastating, natural disasters, RAND experts offered 270 specific courses of action needed across infrastructure, communities, and natural systems. Four years later, some of these experts reflect on the progress made – and not made – in shoring up the island’s resilience.
When Hurricane Fiona struck the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico on Sept. 18, electricity went out across the island. While nearly all service has since been restored, about 40,000 on the island remain without power. It was a reminder that recovery from 2017’s Hurricane Maria is far from complete and is complicated by subsequent compound disasters that have also included major earthquakes in 2019 and 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic.
RAND’s Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) was a major contributor to Puerto Rico’s economic and disaster recovery plan (PDF) in 2018, which detailed 270 specific courses of action needed across infrastructure, communities, and natural systems. We asked some of those researchers about the difficulties Puerto Rico is still facing, from its power grid to increasingly powerful storms.
· Ismael Arciniegas Rueda is a senior economist who previously held leadership positions at major energy companies. He also teaches courses at the Pardee RAND Graduate School on energy markets and climate risk management.
· Tom LaTourrette is a senior physical scientist and interim director of the Community Health and Environmental Policy program.
· Aimee Curtright is a senior physical scientist whose research focuses on energy and infrastructure technology and who led the HSOAC energy sector team for the 2018 recovery plan.
· Melissa Finucane is a senior social and behavioral scientist who focuses on the human dimensions of environmental health risks. She is codirector of the RAND Climate Resilience Center.
· Rahim Ali is a technical analyst in the Engineering and Applied Sciences department who works on critical infrastructure protection and disaster preparedness and recovery.
Five years after Hurricane Maria, should we have expected that there would still be such widespread power loss?
Ismael Arciniegas Rueda: Rebuilding the electric grid in Puerto Rico—but at the same time keeping the lights on—is very complex. As a data point, it takes, on average, 10 years to complete a high-voltage transmission line. So five years to have completed a completely new grid is too short. The critical metric now after Hurricane Fiona is going to be the time to recover power for everyone in Puerto Rico. That should be much faster this time because of multiple steps completed since 2017 to improve energy resilience.
