Synergistic Use of Nighttime Satellite Data, Electric Utility Infrastructure, and Ambient Population to Improve Power Outage Detections in Urban Areas

Abstract

Natural and anthropogenic hazards are frequently responsible for disaster events, leading to damaged physical infrastructure, which can result in loss of electrical power for affected locations. Remotely-sensed, nighttime satellite imagery from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi-NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) can monitor power outages in disaster-affected areas through the identification of missing city lights. When combined with locally-relevant geospatial information, these observations can be used to estimate power outages, defined as geographic locations requiring manual intervention to restore power. In this study, we produced a power outage product based on Suomi-NPP VIIRS DNB observations to estimate power outages following Hurricane Sandy in 2012. This product, combined with known power outage data and ambient population estimates, was then used to predict power outages in a layered, feedforward neural network model. We believe this is the first attempt to synergistically combine such data sources to quantitatively estimate power outages. The VIIRS DNB power outage product was able to identify initial loss of light following Hurricane Sandy, as well as the gradual restoration of electrical power. The neural network model predicted power outages with reasonable spatial accuracy, achieving Pearson coefficients (r) between 0.48 and 0.58 across all folds. Our results show promise for producing a continental United States (CONUS)-or global-scale power outage monitoring network using satellite imagery and locally-relevant geospatial data.

The State of Remote Sensing Capabilities of Cascading Hazards Over High Mountain Asia

“…Following the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal, data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) "Day-Night Band" sensor aboard the NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership satellite, was able to identify the reduced light emissions in the affected area based on pre-and post-event imagery (Schultz and Molthan, 2015). This product has also been used during other disasters to monitor power outages and recovery, such as following Hurricanes Maria and Sandy (Cole et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2018). SAR data can also provide rapid information on estimated building damage to response communities following major events (e.g., Yun et al, 2015;Karimzadeh et al, 2017;Sharma et al, 2017).…”

Monitoring Disaster-Related Power Outages Using Nasa Black Marble Nighttime Light Product

“…It caused flooding streets and left more than eight million people without electricity during late October 2012 (Cao et al, 2013;Cole et al, 2017). The power grid was suspended for several days at some areas.…”

“…The pixel-based percent of normal NTL was used to detect the spatial extend of power outage (Cao et al 2013, Cole et al, 2017:…”

Agent Based Model to Estimate Time to Restoration of Storm-Induced Power Outages

“…The model could be utilized prior to a storm based on outage predictions [21][22][23][24][25][26] or in real-time as outages are discovered.…”