Modeling a National Power Crisis in Support of a Crisis Lifecycle Model

摘要

Society is dependent upon electricity. In the last decade international scale outages have occurred with unfortunate regularity. While the impact of these outages has been limited to a few hours or days, they have been expensive and prompted fears that more severe failures could occur. While crises are perceived as events, their true origins come from the pre-crisis and post-crisis phases, where preparations and learning set the stage for the successful management of unusual events. A power crisis of a few weeks duration can set the policy agenda for many years. In this paper we describe a crisis model that captures the dynamic state of a power grid, the effects of failure on clients, government, and the public. The model was developed in concert with and validated by a panel of crisis managers. These factors combine to determine the post-crisis policies and socio-political factors that influence policy over much longer timeframes.