Community-informed resource allocation optimization for power grid resilience against flood hazards

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-1-2025

Abstract

This paper presents a community-informed resource allocation approach for enhancing distribution grid resilience against flooding. Geographical zones are classified according to community vulnerabilities. A budgetary strategy is introduced to account for community needs in decision-making. A vulnerability index is developed based on substation conditions, the population of vulnerable communities, and the economic status of each zone. This index is then incorporated into an optimization model to allocate resources effectively. The approach is applied to a synthetic distribution system of Baton Rouge with 24 substations, demonstrating the impact of integrating community needs into resource allocation. Simulation results show that incorporating community considerations increases overall system costs by 44.67% and 50.36% at consideration levels of 0.5 and 0.8, respectively. However, resources allocated to vulnerable zones enhance resilience and mitigate disproportionate impacts. Alternative vulnerability indices based on population, population density, and density-weighted population are explored, highlighting diverse approaches for measuring vulnerability and reinforcing the importance of a comprehensive, context-specific index. Further analysis across varying budget levels indicates that increasing the total budget can offset the financial burden of community-informed allocations. Varying the conditional value at risk coefficient shows that higher risk aversion reduces worst-case losses at the cost of increased overall expenditures, while adjusting the confidence level reveals a trade-off between targeting extreme tail events and minimizing total costs.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Electric Power Systems Research

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