Related papers: Blackouts, risk, and fat-tailed distributions
Can we conclude the stability of an unknown dynamical system from the knowledge of a finite number of snapshots of trajectories? We tackle this black-box problem for switched linear systems. We show that, for any given random set of…
Cascading failures in power systems normally occur as a result of initial disturbance or faults on electrical elements, closely followed by errors of human operators. It remains a great challenge to systematically trace the source of…
A model of an evolving network of interacting molecular species is shown to exhibit repeated rounds of crashes in which several species get rapidly depopulated, followed by recoveries. The network inevitably self-organizes into an…
We introduce a statistical model for operational losses based on heavy-tailed distributions and bipartite graphs, which captures the event type and business line structure of operational risk data. The model explicitly takes into account…
Fading is the time-dependent variation in transmitted signal strength through a complex medium, due to interference or temporally evolving multipath scattering. In this paper we use random matrix theory (RMT) to establish a first-principles…
For large-scale power networks, the failure of particular transmission lines can offload power to other lines and cause self-protection trips to activate, instigating a cascade of line failures. In extreme cases, this can bring down the…
The risk of cascading blackouts greatly relies on failure probabilities of individual components in power grids. To quantify how component failure probabilities (CFP) influences blackout risk (BR), this paper proposes a sample-induced…
Why was the $6 billion FAA air traffic control project scrapped? How could the 1977 New York City blackout occur? Why do large scale engineering systems or technology projects fail? How do engineering changes and errors propagate, and how…
We discuss ways to measure duration in a power transmission system resilience event by modeling outage and restore processes from utility data. We introduce novel Poisson process models that describe how resilience events progress and…
This paper develops a Hall-Sandpile model of economic instability that combines a Hall-like transversal stress mechanism with sandpile threshold dynamics on a real production-network substrate. In analogy with the physical Hall effect,…
The power grid defines one of the most important technological networks of our times and sustains our complex society. It has evolved for more than a century into an extremely huge and seemingly robust and well understood system. But it…
Tropical cyclones are affected by a large number of climatic factors, which translates into complex patterns of occurrence. The variability of annual metrics of tropical-cyclone activity has been intensively studied, in particular since the…
Reasoning about causes and effects naturally arises in the engineering of safety-critical systems. A classical example is Fault Tree Analysis, a deductive technique used for system safety assessment, whereby an undesired state is reduced to…
The power distribution system is evolving in the form of an intelligent grid. The proliferation of distributed energy resources (DERs) makes the previously passive system active and more complicated. With the adoption of de-carbonization…
This paper aims to investigate the risk identification problem of power transmission system that is integrated with renewable energy sources. In practice, the fluctuation of power generation from renewable energy sources can lead to severe…
This paper considers the dynamics of edges in a network. The Dynamic Bond Percolation (DBP) process models, through stochastic local rules, the dependence of an edge $(a,b)$ in a network on the states of its neighboring edges. Unlike…
The February 2021 Texas winter power outage has led to hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in economic losses, largely due to the generation failure and record-breaking electric demand. In this paper, we study the scaling-up of…
In today's global economy, supply chain (SC) entities have become increasingly interconnected with demand and supply relationships due to the need for strategic outsourcing. Such interdependence among firms not only increases efficiency but…
The uncertainty in distribution grid planning is driven by the unpredictable spatial and temporal patterns in adopting electric vehicles (EVs) and solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. This complexity, stemming from interactions among EVs, PV…
Due to uncertainties and the complicated intrinsic dynamics of power systems, it is difficult to predict the cascading failure paths once the cascades occur. This makes it challenging to achieve the effective power system protection against…