TY - JOUR
T1 - Articulating strategies to address heat resilience using spatial optimization and temporal analysis of utility assistance data of the Salvation Army Metro Phoenix
AU - Zhao, Qunshan
AU - Dickson, Chelsea
AU - Thornton, Jowan
AU - Solís, Patricia
AU - Wentz, Elizabeth A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience is supported by Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust . Piper Trust supports organizations that enrich health, well-being, and opportunity for the people of Maricopa County, Arizona. The conclusions, views and opinions expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust nor of the Salvation Army. Dr. Qunshan Zhao has received UK ESRC's on-going support for the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) [ES/L011921/1 and ES/S007105/1].
Funding Information:
The ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience is supported by Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust. Piper Trust supports organizations that enrich health, well-being, and opportunity for the people of Maricopa County, Arizona. The conclusions, views and opinions expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust nor of the Salvation Army. Dr. Qunshan Zhao has received UK ESRC's on-going support for the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) [ES/L011921/1 and ES/S007105/1]. The authors would like to thank the operational team from the Salvation Army Metro Phoenix (Major Barbara Sloan, Mr. Jowan Thornton, and Ms. Michele Kirkpatrick) for providing internal data sharing and communication. The authors also would like to thank Dr. Ziqi Li and Mr. Sam Golla for data analysis support, the ASU Decision Theater Network team (Dr. Srivatsav Kandala, Mr. Vikash Bajaj, Dr. Fangwu Wei, and Dr. Margaret Hinrichs) for visualization support, and Dr. Chuyuan Wang and Dr. Wei Luo for reviewing an early version of this article and providing useful comments. We would also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors
PY - 2020/9
Y1 - 2020/9
N2 - Long-term community resilience, which privileges a long-view look at chronic, slow-moving issues affecting communities, has begun to draw more attention from researchers and policymakers. In the Valley of the Sun, resilience to heat is both a necessity and a way of life. Solutions are ubiquitous but nevertheless still in demand over the long, hot summers in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. Residents heavily rely on air conditioning (AC) for relief from heat stress, illness, and to prevent indoor heat-related deaths. However, paying for the electricity to keep homes cool can be expensive and the electric bills can be cost prohibitive for many low-income individuals and families. Local government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and charitable organizations have programs that provide financial assistance for qualified applicants offering limited relief from electricity costs. To better understand the utility assistance landscape in the Phoenix metropolitan area as a contributor to heat resilience among vulnerable communities, we created a collaborative team of individuals from the university and the Salvation Army, one of the more than 80 organizations that provides emergency economic aid for low-income families to pay high-cost electricity bills, to articulate insights about systemic efficiencies and efficacies, from a data-informed perspective. We utilized exploratory data analysis and advanced spatial analytical methods with the Salvation Army, to build a shared understanding of knowledge gaps and verified hunches. Our collaborative research confirms that minority groups (African American and Native American) disproportionately require assistance. Meanwhile, 30% of the travel time and distance to intake interviews could be saved by switching from zip code-based assignment systems to address-based assignment systems. Budgeting across empirically identified temporal patterns of need could offer resilience benefits to the most vulnerable. As a result of this community research partnership, data from the Salvation Army reveals the character and dimension of critical challenges within the utility assistance system as a whole, informs both immediate solutions and builds a knowledge base for transforming future operations for the organization, while it shapes broader conversations across the community of service providers about heat resilience in both spatial and temporal terms.
AB - Long-term community resilience, which privileges a long-view look at chronic, slow-moving issues affecting communities, has begun to draw more attention from researchers and policymakers. In the Valley of the Sun, resilience to heat is both a necessity and a way of life. Solutions are ubiquitous but nevertheless still in demand over the long, hot summers in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. Residents heavily rely on air conditioning (AC) for relief from heat stress, illness, and to prevent indoor heat-related deaths. However, paying for the electricity to keep homes cool can be expensive and the electric bills can be cost prohibitive for many low-income individuals and families. Local government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and charitable organizations have programs that provide financial assistance for qualified applicants offering limited relief from electricity costs. To better understand the utility assistance landscape in the Phoenix metropolitan area as a contributor to heat resilience among vulnerable communities, we created a collaborative team of individuals from the university and the Salvation Army, one of the more than 80 organizations that provides emergency economic aid for low-income families to pay high-cost electricity bills, to articulate insights about systemic efficiencies and efficacies, from a data-informed perspective. We utilized exploratory data analysis and advanced spatial analytical methods with the Salvation Army, to build a shared understanding of knowledge gaps and verified hunches. Our collaborative research confirms that minority groups (African American and Native American) disproportionately require assistance. Meanwhile, 30% of the travel time and distance to intake interviews could be saved by switching from zip code-based assignment systems to address-based assignment systems. Budgeting across empirically identified temporal patterns of need could offer resilience benefits to the most vulnerable. As a result of this community research partnership, data from the Salvation Army reveals the character and dimension of critical challenges within the utility assistance system as a whole, informs both immediate solutions and builds a knowledge base for transforming future operations for the organization, while it shapes broader conversations across the community of service providers about heat resilience in both spatial and temporal terms.
KW - Community resilience
KW - GIS
KW - Heat vulnerability
KW - Spatial optimization
KW - The Salvation Army
KW - Utility assistance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087758736&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85087758736&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.apgeog.2020.102241
DO - 10.1016/j.apgeog.2020.102241
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087758736
SN - 0143-6228
VL - 122
JO - Applied Geography
JF - Applied Geography
M1 - 102241
ER -