Estimated Time to Restoration of Hurricane Sandy in a Future Climate

Tara C. Walsh, David W. Wanik, Emmanouil N. Anagnostou and Jonathan E. Mellor
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Tara C. Walsh: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA
David W. Wanik: Operations and Information Management, University of Connecticut, Stamford, CT 06901, USA
Emmanouil N. Anagnostou: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA
Jonathan E. Mellor: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 16, 1-27

Abstract: Power outage restoration following extreme storms is a complicated process that couples engineering processes and human decisions. Emergency managers typically rely on past experiences and have limited access to computer simulations to aid in decision-making. Climate scientists predict that although hurricane frequency may decrease, the intensity of storms may increase. Increased damage from hurricanes will result in new restoration challenges that emergency managers may not have experience solving. Our study uses agent-based modeling (ABM) to determine how restoration might have been impacted for 30 different scenarios of Hurricane Sandy for a climate in 2112 (Sandy2112). These Sandy2112 scenarios were obtained from a previous study that modeled how outages from Hurricane Sandy in 2012 might have been affected in the future as climate change intensified both wind and precipitation hazards. As the number of outages increases, so does the expected estimated time to restoration for each storm. The impact of increasing crews is also studied to determine the relationship between the number of crews and outage durations (or restoration curves). Both the number of outages and the number of crews impact the variability in time to restoration. Our results can help emergency managers and policy makers plan for future hurricanes that are likely to become stronger and more impactful to critical infrastructure.

Keywords: agent-based modeling; climate change; emergency management; extreme events; power distribution; power outage restoration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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