Analyzing Interconnectivity and Critical Risk in Space Weather Indexes

Abstract:

Human-natural systems, like the electric power grid, are the complex culmination of interdependent processes. Existing methods to quantify the interdependencies between diverse components of the world’s power grid suffers from: 1) integration challenges for sufficiently diverse data that span domains; 2) a dearth of rigorous definition, understanding, and synopsis of indicators of risk (i.e., critical risk indicators (CRIs)); and 3) utilization of data-driven approaches to emerge novel CRIs. Among the most important, yet ironically least well understood, threats to the power grid is the ‘space weather’ that is driven by solar processes and energy. The currents space weather causes in the Earth’s upper atmosphere drive corresponding currents in the long conducting wires of the power grid that wreak havoc and potential catastrophic collapse of the grid. We share results from research that integrate data across the solar-terrestrial connection and power utilities, and and utilize sophisticated statistical and ML methods to better understand interconnectivity of space weather measurements and emerge new CRIs. This work represents the transdisciplinary approach, bringing together domain scientists (space physicists and electrical engineers), applied scientists (power grid owners and operators), and data scientists, that is required to produce new risk indicators that bring resiliency to essential human-natural systems.