From Planning to Performance: Smarter Utility EAPs With Earthquake Sensor Data

When disasters strike, power is the lifeline upon which all others depend, putting pressure on the energy industry to have proactive measures in place that will minimize downtime. One component of a power company’s Emergency Action Plan (EAP) should be the strategic placement of seismic instrumentation to monitor earthquake shaking at critical assets, alert key personnel to potential damage, and give decision-makers the important information they need to lead the company’s response. 

Both Pre- and Post-Earthquake evaluation are crucial for maximizing the value of these seismic sensors in a power company’s EAP:

Pre-earthquake: Risk Assessment and Strategic Instrumentation

It is essential that emergency planners within the organization understand their exposure to earthquake risk. At a high level, they must:

• Engage in a robust pre-disaster threat assessment. What earthquake scenarios have the potential to damage power generation, transmission, and distribution?
• Compile a high-level inventory of key assets, particularly single-point-of-failure equipment.
• Understand the human and physical resources they will have on hand after a major event to triage impacts to their network, inspect potentially damaged facilities, and address the assets that are most critical to restoring power to their customers.

Once these steps are completed, it will become clear that in a major disaster scenario, such as an earthquake on a fault in a large urban area or in a region where response resources are thin, access to credible, real-time information on shaking intensity and asset damage will be necessary to establish a full and effective response.

This is where strategic installation of seismic instrumentation can be valuable. Seismic instrumentation provides near real-time data and alerts about the intensity of shaking at a site and, when paired with structural information about an asset’s construction type, age, and other metrics, an estimate of actual building damage that may have occurred.

Choosing where to place instruments among the thousands of assets that many energy utilities own and operate requires carefully considering: 

• Which assets produce the bulk of the utility’s power?
• Where will key personnel gather to make real-time decisions during a disaster?
• Where are the line trucks and repair equipment stored?
• Which substations provide power to critical societal lifelines (emergency services, hospitals, shelters, local emergency operations centers, water supply stations, etc.)?
• Which hard-to-access facilities, perhaps in rugged terrain or far from staff, are critical to operations?

Answering these questions will allow for a thoughtful, efficient deployment of seismic instrumentation throughout the company’s network that provides the confidence that the critical assets are being monitored 24×7.

Post-Earthquake: Response Prioritization and Damage Assessment

Once an event has occurred, the utility must quickly determine the breadth and severity of damage, to inform their response, guide communications efforts, and above all, to stabilize the grid and restore power. An advanced earthquake instrumentation deployment strategy now earns its investment many times over. 

Instrumentation that measures actual shaking intensity at an asset means decision-makers will not have to rely on often vague interpolated estimates of severity from maps developed only with basic magnitude and epicenter data, or even local news reporting. 

Furthermore, when each asset is paired with a vulnerability function tailored to its unique structural characteristics, such as construction type, age, and design, measured shaking data can be translated into damage estimates with far greater confidence and accuracy than generalized, publicly available tools. With this level of insight, emergency operations center (EOC) and executive teams can quickly identify which assets are most likely to be damaged, visualize how an entire portfolio has performed through integration with EOC platforms, and deliver near real-time alerts to key personnel via phone or email—enabling faster, more informed response decisions.

Access to this information empowers organizations to:

• Prioritize asset inspections by staff. Efficient prioritization of inspections and repairs at this stage is crucial for grid recovery.
• Coordinate with local governments and mutual aid partners to inform a rapid and safe response.
• Communicate more quickly to their customers, providing crucial information about hazards and the company’s efforts to restore service.

Until recently, this level of asset-specific, real-time seismic insight was not possible. Advances in seismic sensing technology have now made it feasible to deploy sensors capable of delivering this depth of information at scale. Safehub has pushed seismic sensor innovation further than ever before, developing sensors and systems that make these capabilities a practical reality for organizations managing critical infrastructure today.

Safehub Seismic Sensors

When seconds count, the use of Safehub’s seismic sensors to monitor a utility network can save valuable time by providing a well-calibrated and rapid estimate of damage to critical assets. This information can accelerate utility response and fuel recovery. Instrumentation that is low-cost, scalable, and wireless makes it easy to incorporate earthquake monitoring into a utility’s EAP.

Today, Safehub partners with power companies to deploy their low-cost seismic instrumentation solution, ensuring that critical facilities are continuously monitored and decision makers have the information they need to manage a crisis. Learn more here: https://safehub.io/damage-information/power-utilities/