Toward Equitable Power Infrastructure Resilience

灾难恢复研究补助金(DRRG)项目通过考虑不同社区面临的困难，并将这些困难整合到保护电力基础设施免受洪水灾害的保护中，建立了电网恢复能力公平的模型。该项目的重点是考虑到停电的社会后果，主动保护变电站免受洪水侵袭。通过这样做，该项目为解决电力系统决策问题的方法带来了革命性的变化。该项目的学术价值包括促进对不同社区停电的了解，并为公用事业公司开展的规划行动开发具有公平意识的优化方法。该项目的更广泛影响包括有助于定义和整合电网规划中的公平考虑因素，使整个国家受益，但重点是新奥尔良，该地区处于气候变化的第一线，人口多样化，财富和基础设施分布不平衡。此外，该项目还包括多项教育和外联活动，旨在促进公平，鼓励未得到充分服务和历史悠久的黑人学院和大学(HBCU)的学生参与STEM领域。它将所有社区(包括弱势群体)经历的困难纳入停电影响评估，并将公平考虑纳入电网强化政策。通过采用注重公平风险的优化方法，该项目旨在最大限度地减少极端天气事件对社会经济造成的不公平影响。这一灾难恢复研究资助项目提供了更好的了解停电造成的不同社区困难，并开发了创新的概念，如股权风险价值，以减轻电网故障的影响。计算高效的解决方案方法可以促进决策者采用股权风险感知优化，确保研究结果的实用性和适用性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Disaster Resilience Research Grant (DRRG) project models power grid resilience equity by considering the hardships faced by different communities and integrating these hardships into the protection of power infrastructure against flood-induced hazards. The project focuses on proactively safeguarding power substations against flooding, taking into account the social consequences of power outages. By doing so, this project brings transformative change for approaches to solving policy-making problems in power systems. The intellectual merits of the project include advancing the understanding of power outages in diverse communities and developing equity-aware optimization approaches for planning actions conducted by utility companies. The broader impacts of the project include contributing to the definition and integration of equity considerations in power grid planning, benefiting the nation as a whole, but with a focus on New Orleans, a region on the front lines of climate change with diverse populations and disparities in wealth and infrastructure distribution. Additionally, the project includes multiple educational and outreach activities aimed at promoting equity and encouraging the participation of underserved and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) students in STEM fields.This project makes valuable contributions to the fields of power grid and disaster resilience. It integrates the hardships experienced across all communities, including the disadvantaged, into the assessment of power outage impacts and incorporates equity considerations into power grid hardening policies. By adopting an equity-risk-aware optimization approach, the project aims to minimize inequitable socio-economic impacts of extreme weather events. This Disaster Resilience Research grant project provides a better understanding of differential community hardships resulting from power outages and develop innovative concepts such as equity value at risk to mitigate the impact of power grid failures. Computationally efficient solution approaches can facilitate the adoption of equity-risk-aware optimization by decision-makers, ensuring the practicality and applicability of the research findings.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.