Collaborative Research: Self-Organized Criticality, Blackouts and Disruptions in Power and Communication Systems

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This award is made under the Exploratory Research on Engineering the Transport Industries (ETI) program solicitation. The United States depends on the smooth functioning of its electrical power and communication systems infrastructure. To minimize disruptions to these complex systems, it is necessary to understand, predict and control their responses to outside perturbations. The concept of self- organized criticality (SOC) brings together ideas of self-organization of nonlinear dynamical systems with the often observed near critical behavior of many natural phenomena. This work advances the understanding of self-organized criticality in these systems. The primary focus of work is electric power system blackouts and the secondary focus is disruptions in communication systems.Initial analyses of time series of power system blackout sizes and internet congestion show evidence of long time correlations, which are consistent with SOC behavior. We will expand and deepen these initial analyses of experimental data. We will develop and analyze simulation models capturing SOC effects in electric power systems and communication networks. Initial work suggests a heuristic explanation of SOC in electric power system blackouts. We will test and refine this initial heuristic explanation by analyzing simulation models. We will determine the extent to which electric power system blackouts and communication system networks show SOC in their global complex dynamics.