SGER: Electric Utility Damage from Hurricane Katrina

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AbstractThe principal investigator will focus on the evaluation of damage incurred by the power delivery system of the Gulf Coast during the Hurricane Katrina event. In this context, the power delivery system is comprised of the generation, transmission and distribution facilities. Implications of prolonged power outages on the functioning of other lifelines such as emergency services, health care facilities, water treatment and supply, transportation systems and telecommunications will be assessed from available data. Specific tasks considered critical include, but are not limited to, the following: interviewof local utility officials regarding structural engineering repair and design issues; collection of damage data for various components of each system from the field as repairs are made by utility crews (or without the availability of crews as necessary); collection of data regarding the restoration process of the varioussubsystems of power delivery; processing of any geographical information systems (GIS) related data and any geo-coding of new or modified systems as required; and disseminating the results through conference proceedings, seminars and archival journal articles. The use of influence diagrams and other systems engineering tools will be employed in modeling system failure and restoration as well as any significant interactions of other lifelines with electric power delivery. Specific questions to be examined are as follows: What structural design modifications can be made to ease the repair of distribution and transmission systems? Are certain structural components more prone to wind-induced damage than others? Will specific modifications to the structural redundancy of critical junctions in the lifeline network ensure significant hurricane hardening of the system? How does this hurricane damage (Katrina) differ from other events? What are the similarities and differences of damage caused by different long-term wind events such as ice storms? Examination of the data at the home institution includes a consideration of any spatially related parameters such as network fragilities and outage duration distribution analysis.