Implementation of AI-Infused Outage Management Solutions for Weather and Utility Applications

Our climate is changing faster than any of us could have predicted. Record after record, extreme after extreme, disaster after disaster; our planet is taking a strong beating it doesn't deserve. For a third consecutive year, our smartest and most fearless leaders confirmed this by stating extreme weather events are the greatest risk to mankind in terms of likelihood, shortly followed by failure to adapt to climate change and natural disasters (World Economic Forum, 2019). A changing climate impacts all elements of society but none greater than the infrastructure that provides us access to clean water, electricity, and most importantly the Internet: Utilities. As society becomes more and more dependent on technology, every disruption becomes more painful than the last.

More extreme and frequent weather events, aging infrastructure, and poor vegetation applications have caused a sharp increase in utility power outages over the last few decades. Utility companies are experiencing rising storm response costs and regulatory pressure due to inefficient mobilization decisions and inadequate preparedness. Hyper-local weather and geospatial data combined with advanced analytics and machine learning techniques can create a number of powerful outage management solutions including vegetation management, outage prediction, and resource optimization. When effectively developed and deployed, these solutions can significantly improve grid reliability, storm response efforts, and customer satisfaction for utilities.

The presentation will first discuss the state of the climate and grid by summarizing four key themes: Data, Resiliency, Reliability, and Situational Awareness. An overview of IBM and The Weather Company’s outage management offerings will then be discussed which will highlight a few utilities who are presently using these solutions in operations. The presentation will conclude with a summary of future enhancements and capabilities from the offering suite.