EAPSI: Resilience of the South Korean electric grid to disasters: Development of socio-infrastructure network models

Eisenberg Daniel A, Tempe AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Catastrophic events such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdown have intensified global interest in improving the resilience of electric power systems in East Asia. Defined as the ability to plan and prepare for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to threats, resilience represents the ability of engineered systems to take positive action under known and unknown stress. Recent corruption cases that caused the shutdown of multiple Korean nuclear power plants demonstrate that social dimensions such as management practices, public concern for nuclear power, and disaster protocols must be considered when measuring the resilience of the grid. However, resilience analysis of engineered systems often does not incorporate social dimensions and cannot measure disaster planning, preparation, or adaptation. Until a new method is developed that can link social and electric power infrastructure dynamics together, Korea's electric grid will remain fragile to disaster. This project seeks to create empirical network models of Korean institutions and electric power infrastructure to measure the resilience of the interdependent socio-infrastructure system. With resilience expert Dr. Jeryang Park at Hongik University, data about generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure will be collected to create a network model of the Korean grid. Korean resilience and electric power experts will be interviewed to create a network model of Korean electric power and disaster governance and management institutions. The models will be analyzed to determine their topological features that influence disaster planning and preparation, absorption, recovery, and adaptation. Furthermore, both models will be analyzed to determine interdependencies between social institutions and built infrastructure to identify resource and operations decisions that can reduce the impacts of future disasters. Overall, this project is a first step towards better analytical tools for resilience analysis and validated theories of coupled social-ecological-technological resilience. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with National Research Foundation of Korea.