ASCENT: Sensor-enabled Wildfire Awareness and Risk Management (WARM) for Electric Power Infrastructure

电网容易受到日益增加的野火风险的影响，特别是在森林和农村地区。这主要是由于这些偏远地区缺乏风险意识，这使得预防和应对管理变得困难。这个NSF项目通过设计和测试一个野火意识和风险管理（WARM）系统来解决这个问题，该系统将使用物联网（IoT）无线传感器来监测远程电力基础设施周围的环境，并在高野火风险时期支持弹性电网运行。该项目将为电力公司、监管机构和市政管理者应对野火威胁的方式带来革命性的变化，提高他们的实时态势感知能力，并制定方法和战略，增加他们成功预防和快速响应的选择。这些变化将通过遥感、无线通信、电力系统安全分析和优化方面的进步来实现。这个项目的智力价值在于理解、预测、测量和减轻与电网相关的野火风险。通过本项目开发的传感器套件和风险管理方法可在减轻灾害、环境监测和公共安全方面产生更广泛的影响。尽管野火和停电具有重要的社会影响，但与电网相关的野火风险管理的感知和决策方法存在根本性差距。我们通过以下方式解决了这一知识差距：(1)提出了一种自我可持续、低维护的传感器套件，可以准确、快速地检测附近发生的野火风险；(2)创建基于数据的野火风险管理框架，以便与不断变化的监管约束和政策目标保持一致的先发制人和响应性决策。结果是一个综合的WARM系统，该系统将电力系统和环境条件（如天气）的现有数据与传感器套件的数据相结合，为改进野火风险的时空管理提供基本见解和创新方法。该项目的预期效益包括在野火风险升高期间电力系统运行可靠性的显著提高，以及更明智的断电决策，从而减少、缩短和更有针对性的停电。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The electric grid is susceptible to increasing wildfire risks, particularly in forested and rural areas. This is primarily due to a lack of risk awareness in such remote locations, which makes prevention and response management difficult. This NSF project addresses this problem by designing and testing a Wildfire Awareness and Risk Management (WARM) system that will use Internet of Things (IoT) wireless sensors to monitor the environment around remote electric power infrastructures and support resilient grid operation during high wildfire risk periods. The project will bring transformative changes to the way power utilities, regulatory agencies, and municipal managers react to wildfire threats by raising their real-time situational awareness and developing methods and strategies that increase their options for successful prevention and rapid response. These changes will be achieved by making advances in remote sensing, wireless communication, power system security analysis, and optimization. The intellectual merit of this project lies in understanding, anticipating, measuring, and mitigating wildfire risks associated with the electric grid. The sensor suites and risk management approaches developed through this project can have broader impacts in disaster mitigation, environmental monitoring, and public safety.Despite the critical societal impacts of wildfires and power outages, there are fundamental gaps in sensing and decision-making methods for wildfire risk management related to the electric grid. We address this knowledge gap by: (1) proposing a self-sustainable, low-maintenance sensor suite that will accurately and quickly detect wildfire risks occurring in its vicinity, and (2) creating data-informed wildfire risk management frameworks for preemptive and responsive decision-making that are consistent with evolving regulatory constraints and policy objectives. The result is a comprehensive WARM system that combines currently available data on power systems and ambient conditions (such as weather) with data from the sensor suites to provide fundamental insights and innovative approaches for improved spatio-temporal management of wildfire risks. The expected benefits of this project include significant improvements in the operational reliability of the power system during periods of elevated wildfire risk and more informed decisions about power shutoffs, leading to fewer, shorter, and more targeted power outages.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.