Industry Highlights

One of the most challenging aspects of outage restoration is replacing grid equipment that is damaged, especially large transformers.  Simply put, there is no easy way to procure these items on [...]

Road blockages caused by evacuation traffic and debris can be a major hindrance to effective utility restoration efforts.   This is certainly not Earth-shattering news to those in the know, but [...]

Whether you are fully onboard or not, one thing we can all agree on is that global warming, if true, is bad.  Very bad, especially for us emergency preparedness folks who are faced with the [...]

The damage from Hurricane Maria to Puerto Rico’s power grid gets most of the press, and rightfully so with the ongoing restoration projected to cost north of $100 billion.  But it has been months [...]

Every few months it seems as though a new form of extreme weather comes to the forefront.  This time, it’s a fire tornado, but this is just the latest in a long line of strange weather [...]

New innovations in natural disaster mapping are starting to come to fruition.  Natural disasters such as landslides and earthquakes can quickly alter landscapes, which presents logistical [...]

Fascinating.  I’ve heard a lot in recent years about artificial intelligence, augmented reality, machine learning, and virtual reality, but the term augmented intelligence is a new one for [...]

Yes, you read that correctly – the Federal government is working on an initiative to incorporate asteroid threats into emergency plans.  From solar storms to space junk, it seems space has its [...]

As if the loss of life and property that often results from forest fires is not enough, a new study indicates that fire events can also contaminate the local drinking water supply.  This is an [...]

Most of my blog posts revolve around utility disaster planning, but there are definitely things we can learn by analyzing emergency preparedness efforts in other sectors.  As such, let’s take a [...]