Web Tool for Improved Electric Outage Forecasting for Response to Tropical Cyclone Events

In this two-year project, we will develop and deploy an online software tool available to the DOE Emergency Operations Center (EOC) analysts that enables them to make repeatable predictions of electrical outages caused by imminent or synthetic tropical cyclones at a spatial resolution of 250 m × 250 m with quantified uncertainty. The online software tool will also identify critical infrastructure at risk from direct cyclone impacts and secondary impacts from electric power outages. The software tool will provide automated updates in a timely fashion with new results available less than 30 minutes after new input data become available. Such a tool will provide DOE decision-makers with defensible, high fidelity analytic results and products for use by Federal, State, and local government agencies and industry partners. The proposed work directly addresses needs identified in the DOE MYPP under Task 6.2.2 "Risk and Decision Science for Energy Systems."