Water Infrastructure in the Arctic: Vulnerabilities at the Intersection of Social, Natural and Physical Systems

Even when it exists, formal water infrastructure in rural Alaska often fails to provide an adequate level of service to Alaska households and communities. The small and remote nature of communities present unusual logistical, financial, and workforce challenges, while an extreme and changing climate further complicates the technical work needed to operate and maintain the system. Accordingly, this project sought knowledge of the water service challenges, data needs, mitigation strategies, and workforce issues experienced by Arctic communities. This research was a partnership between Alaskan communities and organizations, and universities from across the United States. It was a transdisciplinary effort involving engineers, anthropologists, climate scientists, artists, tribal education specialists, and community infrastructure users and operators. This planning grant was designed to forefront Alaskan community member and utility operator knowledge, and to build the trust and capacity needed to enable full co-design in future research undertakings.

A majority of homes in the United States receive household water services via complete in-home plumbing. However, in Alaska many communities remain unserved. Seeking drivers behind this trend, we identified the spatiotemporal variations and the sociodemographic parameters that are correlated with the rates of in-home plumbing in Alaska communities. We found that complete plumbing is correlated to multiple characteristics, including the percentage of households that receive social security and are valued under $150,000. The many rural Alaskan regions revealed to have homes without access indicates a pressing need to invest in not only new water systems but also maintenance, operations, and capital improvements.

To better explore drivers behind unserved communities, we then built a holistic, empirical systems model of the nature of water sector challenges in Alaska. This systems model targeted knowledge of the overall system operations. We identified challenges within the financial, human, natural, and technical systems involved in the provision of water services in rural Alaska. The systems approach allowed us to map interdependencies between these systems. We assessed cascading impacts caused by the arctic environment and by climate change that increase the number of unserved communities and system failures. Unsurprisingly, climate change exacerbates the challenging Arctic operating context, straining the financial and technical systems within water infrastructure.  Communities are only able to pay for repairs using emergency funds that become available after system failures. Accordingly, service disruptions are linked to a lack of operations and maintenance funding.  Further, we found that certification of operators posed a barrier to receiving infrastructure funding. To support certification of operators, this planning grant created a mathematics education app, which is described next. 

Operator mathematics education was identified as a barrier to certification by many respondents interviewed in this research. Math education is critical for both operator certification and water treatment plant operations. In response to this need, this project developed and released H2O Academy, an open access app focusing on increasing basic math problem solving skills needed for the water operator Level 1 competency exam. H2O Academy teaches the math concepts operators need to understand flow, concentrations, and equivalencies. Next, the app takes the user through a water treatment plant schematic. In each part of the water treatment plant, the app helps users develop comfort solving math questions typical to and contextualized by that stage of water treatment. Users are able to request feedback and hints for each problem as desired. Bounded random number generators were built into the app to enable greater opportunities for practice.  At the end of the game, users can choose to take a test that randomly pulls questions from all the mathematics concepts covered in the app in order to receive a certificate of completion.

To enable future work at the sociotechnical interface, this project produced an analysis that implemented and compared three qualitative data analysis techniques to explore the collected semi-structured interview dataset. This methodological contribution described how different qualitative methods differ in their use of induction, in their prevalence in existing construction engineering and management research, and in their ability to answer different types of research questions.  For example, a deductive content analysis allowed for a full characterization and quantification of the dataset and discussion of the results in relation to a predefined framework.  This is relevant to frameworks based on design and construction standards. A hybrid content analysis exposed emergent, detailed insights that compliment deductive frameworks. A constant comparative analysis revealed emergent trends and uncovered the reasons why these trends occur.  In addition to building knowledge relevant to this project's research questions, this methodological effort advanced sociotechnical construction and engineering management research by enabling the discipline to better address the industry's complex challenges.

Finally, this planning grant anonymized and archived data from end-user interviews to catalyze research on topics such as the provision of Arctic water services, arctic engineering, and end user needs.