This is a high-level causal loop diagram mapping the impacts of a power outage on FEMA lifelines and associated services, and the resulting potential feedbacks and impacts to human behavior and various dimensions of wellbeing.
A lifeline enables the continuous operation of critical government and business functions and is essential to human health and safety or economic security.
- Lifelines are the most fundamental services in the community that, when stabilized, enable all other aspects of society to function.
- FEMA has developed a construct for objectives-based response that prioritizes the rapid stabilization of Community Lifelines after a disaster.
- The integrated network of assets, services, and capabilities that provide lifeline services are used day-to-day to support the recurring needs of the community and enable all other aspects of society to function.
- When disrupted, decisive intervention (e.g., rapid re-establishment or employment of contingency response solutions) is required to stabilize the incident.
Context-dependent characteristics of hazards, households, and infrastructures influencing vulnerability are represented as variables. Variables are constant or dynamically calculated values that can be used to synthesize data, calibrate models, and/or create forcing functions based on the current time.
Lifeline services are represented as converters, which can be used to represent input-output relationships or graphs.
Multiple forms of capital (e.g., human, natural, social, manufactured) are represented as stocks. Stocks are flexible "buckets" into which something can be accumulated or withdrawn from.
