Enhancing climate shock vulnerability assessment with energy reliability: A comprehensive case study of the Dominican Republic

This study presents an enhanced approach to disaster risk reduction by integrating energy‑reliability metrics into climate shock vulnerability assessments in the Dominican Republic. It examines how frequent and prolonged power outages—driven largely by climate‑related hazards such as hurricanes, storms and flooding—intersect with existing social and geographic vulnerabilities to amplify risk. The paper outlines why traditional vulnerability assessments, which focus mainly on socio‑economic and environmental factors, overlook the critical role of energy reliability, and how this gap is particularly acute in Latin America and the Caribbean, where outage data are scarce. Using geospatial analysis, household‑level indicators and operational data from EDENORTE, the authors develop an energy‑inclusive Climate Shock Vulnerability Index (IVACCe) to identify neighbourhoods where social fragility and infrastructural weaknesses converge. 

The study recommends strengthening resilience planning by systematically incorporating energy‑reliability indicators into national vulnerability frameworks, improving access to detailed outage data, and prioritising investments in circuits and communities where risks are most acute. It emphasises the value of objective, data‑driven tools—such as Pareto‑ranking methods and high‑resolution geospatial analysis—to support equitable decision‑making and guide targeted interventions in disaster‑prone areas. Lessons learned point to the need for closer coordination between social protection systems, energy utilities and disaster management agencies, ensuring that preparedness, adaptation and infrastructure planning are aligned.