  Credibly assessing the resilience of energy infrastructure in the face of
natural disasters is a salient concern facing researchers, government
officials, and community members. Here, we explore the influence of the spatial
distribution of disruptions due to hurricanes and other natural hazards on the
resilience of power distribution systems. We find that incorporating
information about the spatial distribution of disaster impacts has significant
implications for estimating infrastructure resilience. Specifically, the
uncertainty associated with estimated infrastructure resilience metrics to
spatially distributed disaster-induced disruptions is much higher than
determined by previous methods. We present a case study of an electric power
distribution grid impacted by a major landfalling hurricane. We show that
improved characterizations of disaster disruption drastically change the way in
which the grid recovers, including changes in emergent system properties such
as antifragility. Our work demonstrates that previous methods for estimating
critical infrastructure resilience may be overstating the confidence associated
with estimated network recoveries due to the lack of consideration of the
spatial structure of disruptions.
