What exactly is resiliency? Resiliency is the ability to recover from difficulties, traumas, or disasters.
Resiliency isn’t something that just happens. It has to be built. Utilities span wide swaths of territory and have thousands of pieces and parts, all subject to failure. As a result, the condition of the network varies widely from one part of the system to another. Also, the factors that impact the network vary widely as well. In addition, the failure of a part of the network might have vastly different consequences depending on the location. Location matters, that’s why utilities can use GIS to determine where to apply hardening for the most resiliency.
GIS creates, manages, analyzes, and maps all types of data. It connects data to a map, integrating location data with all descriptive information. This provides a foundation for mapping and analysis in science and almost every industry. GIS helps users understand patterns, relationships, and geographic context. The benefits include improved communication and efficiency and better management and decision-making.
Esri’s founder and president, Jack Dangermond, always mentions that understanding precedes action. He likes to use the term geographic approach. It helps us better understand our environment and manage our problems, projects, and goals. The geographic approach helps us gain a full understanding so that action is optimized and science-based. Since we have so much to accomplish, we must have a solid process.
The Process
Here is the shorthand version of the geographic approach:
- Get the data
- Visualize and map
- Analyze
- Predict and understand
That leads us to well-informed decision-making and action. GIS helps us to prepare strategically, respond rapidly, and recover methodically.
What’s the Problem?
Natural disasters are getting worse and more frequent. Over the last ten years, we have been approaching a trillion dollars of damage to the energy infrastructure due to natural events. And things are not getting better.
GIS provided essential information to Clatskanie People’s Utility District (CPUD) to determine fire risk in their territory. This map identifies fire risk areas so that the utility could provide mitigation and better understand where they needed to apply sectionalizing equipment. Read the story here.
Fire risk analysis at Clatskanie People’s Utility District (CPUD)
Storms, floods, and wildfires that have torn apart electrical systems remind us that with all the “smart” we are installing into the grid, it can’t stand up to the impact of climate change. Its impact regularly pummels the grid, often unannounced, leaving millions stranded for days or weeks without power. Things are not getting better. We need a tough and smart grid that can outsmart and withstand the fury that comes with climate change. The grid needs both brains and brawn.
GIS bolsters the resilience process by gathering as much data about external factors– such as wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes – even cyber and physical attacks – things beyond the utility’s control. Each one of these events has location as a primary factor. Next, the utilities must gather as much information as possible about where their vulnerabilities lie and what consequences a failure might cause. Finally, GIS helps utilities prepare for the event. It helps utilities discover where a hurricane, a tornado, or an ice storm could hit. Then, GIS overlays those areas along with network weaknesses to better understand the impact. Finally, this allows the utility, in advance, to ensure they get the most up-to-date asset data and real-time data feeds in place to make their decisions crisp and science-based.
GIS has long been associated with asset records. Yet the power of GIS to communicate cannot be minimized. Maps are one of the best ways to communicate situations, whether communicating a resiliency plan, inspection progress, or restoration effort. For example, Mississippi’s Cooperative Energy uses GIS, among other applications, for situational awareness. See the story here.
Collected damage information is instantly visible in the storm center.
External Factors
One of the first steps in resiliency planning is understanding the susceptibility to various external factors. While we normally associate those factors with natural events. Other factors may be present. For example, power lines near small airports might be susceptible to damage due to a plane crash. Or gas transmission lines installed in particularly wet or acidic areas might be susceptible to corrosion. Wetland areas or termite infestations are also external factors that impact the condition of wood poles that must be considered.
Fortunately, the Esri Living Atlas has a variety of datasets. These datasets help utilities understand where those external factors are located. For example, GIS can display a layer that uses several factors to help assess risk. For example, it can display topology and accessibility and routes of escape or where crews may be able to access difficult areas.
Take earthquake risk. GIS can determine an earthquake’s most likely frequency and magnitude and where it might occur. GIS can leverage datasets, like the USGS, to assess other vulnerabilities. It can play out several different earthquake scenarios to help understand the impact those earthquakes could have. Calling to mind the terrible earthquake events in Turkey and Syria, GIS can identify and visualize areas where buildings and facilities are most at risk.
GIS can overlay USGS shake maps with utility assets, facilities, and supporting roads and highways. As a result, utilities can see the magnitude and the different areas this potential earthquake will impact.
We are seeing areas of flooding that have never happened before. GIS can identify low-lying areas and particularly vulnerable areas along the coast.
GIS can display previous hurricane data to assess its impact – to help us plan better.
Data sets such as FEMA floodplains and wind intensity maps are particularly valuable in determining potential external impacts.
What About the Condition of the Network?
Utilities need to know precisely where the network is most vulnerable before they can even face all the external factors that can cause devastation to their assets. Therefore, the ArcGIS Utility Network (UN) has been designed to map the electric and gas networks and model them.
The UN builds relationships and manages the domain networks and the structural aspects. Since the UN is part of the overall ArcGIS system, it is available via web services to every ArcGIS application, regardless of device.
Central Electric Power Cooperative (CEPC) uses GIS to visualize network vulnerabilities
Central Electric Power Cooperative (CEPC) uses GIS extensively to determine weaknesses in its network. In addition, it leverages mobile technology to get an in-the-field understanding of where the network has issues. For more detail about what CEPC has done, click here.
Utilities can map the many factors contributing to a failure—factors like equipment age, lines running into treed areas, poles in sandy, wet soil, recent tree trimming, and recent maintenance activities. With this information displayed in GIS, utility operators can determine the impact of a power failure by area. In addition, they can assess the potential impact of power loss on large populations or critical facilities, including shelters, water pumps, and telecommunications centers.
As noted above, fully understanding the system’s condition requires strong data governance. Utilities have been historically whetted to paper forms for field inspection activities. This process has led to poor data maintenance, missing records, and large backlogs of paper forms that take days, weeks, and sometimes months to become part of the corporate record. Tohono O’odham Utility Authority (TOUA), located in southern Arizona on the Tohono O’odham tribal land, had a data management problem. It had incomplete records of its utility assets. They used mobile GIS and accurate locating technology to solve the problem of building a comprehensive GIS. Now the utility uses the GIS for many tasks, including assuring better resiliency. Read the story here.
TOUA’s GIS dashboards provide employees at all levels of the utility to visualize the network vulnerabilities
MEDC, in the Governorate of Oman, completely transformed its operations by abandoning its paper processes. Read the story.
MEDC’s dashboard illustrates the power of visualization of data.
What is the Impact?
A utility needs to understand what consequences will likely occur if a portion of the network is damaged. In that way, the utility can prioritize those areas whose failures will impact customers the most. Finally, there is another more subtle situation regarding impact. We have significantly added more highways, expanded the grid, and initiated urban renewal and massive building projects during the last century. Yet the century is replete with failures to do these undertakings with social equity in mind. For example, consider the complete demolition of low-income communities to make way for highways, cultural centers, and high-priced condos. Given the amount of building of our energy infrastructure we will be undertaking, we must invest through the lens of social equity. So as we roll out our hardening programs, it’s critical to map out the impact or lack of impact on those communities most vulnerable.
Esri provides data that maps social equity
Learn about how utilities can leverage Esri’s Social Equity Analysis solution.
Consider another impact on the grid. Perhaps the most devastating event in the US had nothing to do with wildfires, floods, tornados, or hurricanes. The World Trade Center (WTC) attack on September 11, 2001, was horrific. The city had a single point of failure for most of downtown Manhattan. Water, steam, electricity, cellular, cable, and television facilities went through WTC. So, when people think of resiliency, they can use GIS to ensure that essential assets are not vulnerable to an attack.
Roadmap to Resiliency
What are the key takeaways for the roadmap to resiliency
1) Consume as much impact data as possible from as many sources. Then, of course, use GIS to align those - demographic, topography, equity, storm history, the potential for terrorist attacks – organize everything by location. Then, understand and study the external factors. As the famous thought leader Simon Sinek once quipped,” More information is always better than less.” The more the utility knows, the better the analysis. This is particularly true for the roadmap to better resiliency.
2) Get a complete understanding of the network by analyzing data from disparate systems. Get a full picture of the network weaknesses. This process is where GIS can be so helpful. GIS can provide insight into those areas the utility must prioritize.
3) Create the foundation for the company’s resiliency roadmap. This should include planning for foreign crews, staging areas, and backup generators. Where can utilities inject power into the network should the company lose a transmission line? Where should the utility plan hotel locations, should it need foreign crews? Given today’s supply chain crunch, should disaster strike, where can they secure utility material, particularly one-of-a-kind? All of this information depends on location.
So if resilience is the ability to recover from difficulties, traumas, or disasters, we don’t need just a smart grid that gets beat up regularly. Instead, we need a tough, smart grid that can stand up to the realities of nature. GIS can help us get there.