Research Landscape

Water and power flows are complex and are connected in many interdependent ways. Resilience depends on understanding multisector relationships. In addition, resilience means understanding how, where, and when threats may strike, and ultimately how to co-manage resilience strategies to mitigate these threats.

For example, a hazard that affects the water supply system may spread to the power transmission system too. For instance, a sudden change in the electricity consumption of the water pumping stations could cause power quality issues in the power distribution system (e.g., voltage drop/rise, frequency drop/rise) that could then affect the power transmission system.

Literature review results

To better understand today’s landscape of water–energy interconnection and resilience research, we searched for technical reports, projects, and other gray literature to find common research and publication themes. Visuals provide a comprehensive overview of the water–energy nexus. Additionally, they show whether research in these sectors is more quantitatively or qualitatively focused and whether that research is predominantly water- or energy-oriented. More information is available in, "Resilience of Interdependent Water and Power Systems: A Literature Review and Conceptual Modeling Framework." 

Institutional Landscape
Figure 1. Coverage of the water–energy research sphere based on institutional landscape assessment results. The size of the dots indicates the quantity of publications found related to that institution’s water–energy space.

Based on the institutional landscape overview, more work products focus on quantitative analysis rather than qualitative. Additionally, although institutions in the research space were found to be evenly distributed between energy and water spaces in overall placement, fewer institutions were found to have internally balanced research coverage. This result shows that although there may be good coverage of water or energy topics individually, fewer institutions consider them jointly or evenly. This finding appears to be especially true in the qualitative research (i.e., lower half) part of Figure 1, indicating that fewer institutions are leading discussions and panels or promoting policies addressing water–energy interdependencies.

A small number of institutions covered a broad range of topics. This visual shows which topics are covered with the highest frequency (disaster analysis, climate change, water resource planning, and water use efficiency) and the lowest frequency (national security and other nexus linkages) by the institutions included in the search. For example, the Water Environment Federation and the Electric Power Research Institute both had work products on nine of the topics, whereas others were more focused on particular topics in this research space.

Landscape
Figure 2. Research topic coverage by institution shows that a broad range of institutions cover a small number of topics.

Related resources

Water and climate change planning in electric Integrated Resource Planning (IRP)–This white paper explores how electric utilities are, or are not, currently accounting for water variability and climate change impacts in their IRP. The paper points to emerging best practices of electric utilities planning for water variability and climate change in IRP plans around the United States.