From Entanglement to Action: Systemic Resilience to Multi-Hazards in the U.S. Power Grid

Compound, consecutive, and cascading hazards increasingly challenge the systemic resilience of critical infrastructure. Among these, the power grid—vital to nearly every facet of society—is uniquely exposed to interdependent stressors from space weather, terrestrial weather, and wildfire. Traditional single-hazard frameworks are insufficient to capture the dynamic, non-linear interactions across these domains thereby being incapable of understanding systemic dynamics and shaping resilience. 

Drawing on enriched historical event records, statistical network analysis, and sustained engagement with grid operators, we present a new framework for assessing how multi-hazard interactions influence grid resilience. We share event-based storylines—physically self-consistent reconstructions of past events and plausible future pathways—and emergent patterns that reveal both known and previously unrecognized mechanisms of compounding and cascading failure, recovery, and adaptive response. Through investigation of a previously unexamined multi-hazard system (space weather, terrestrial weather, and wildfire) we uncover novel complex behaviors that reframe how resilience and system flourishing can be understood and designed for.

Our findings advance methodologies for multi-hazard resilience assessment by integrating physical hazard processes with socio-technical dynamics, including network structure, operator decision-making, and institutional constraints under deep uncertainty. 

We further outline an emerging global initiative aimed at collective, transdisciplinary action to collect efforts and groups advancing resilience analyses for these ‘wicked problems’ and to collectively explore translating them into adaptive strategies and governance frameworks. By translating multi-hazard insights into actionable knowledge, we offer both methodological tools and institutional pathways for advancing resilience analysis under conditions of deep uncertainty and systemic interdependence.