Electric utility risk managers are tasked with an increasingly complex challenge: predicting and mitigating wildfire risk in a dynamic and unpredictable environment. While “Red Flag Warnings” from the National Weather Service have traditionally served as a key indicator of potential fire danger, they fall short of providing the specific, actionable insights needed for effective decision-making. There is a significant gap between the broad, meteorological focus of Red Flag Warnings and the granular, consequence-driven risk assessments required by electric utilities to protect critical infrastructure and communities. This blind spot leaves utilities exposed to potentially devastating consequences.
The Problem: The Limitations of Weather-Centric Warnings
Primarily, Red Flag Warnings focus on meteorological conditions, such as wind and dryness, but fail to account for the complex interplay of factors that drive actual fire behavior. This leaves electric utilities with a limited understanding of how and where a fire might start and truly impact their service territory.
The core issue is that weather forecasts, while essential, provide conditions, whereas electric utilities require an understanding of consequence. Simply knowing it’s windy and dry doesn’t translate to knowing where assets are most at risk of starting a fire if they come in contact with vegetation or how rapidly that fire may spread. Furthermore, Red Flag Warnings do not quantify the impact of a potential fire. Adding to the problem is the broad geographic scope of weather-centric warnings. This lack of precision can lead to inefficient resource deployment and missed opportunities for targeted mitigation.
Electric utilities need to understand the potential for property damage, population at risk, and infrastructure loss to make informed decisions about resource allocation and mitigation strategies from one possible start to another. In addition, models that can predict fire risk days in advance afford leading electric utilities the ability to implement proactive mitigation strategies, a capability that Red Flag Warnings alone do not provide.
How Utilities Can Respond…and Improve:
Leading electric utilities are addressing this problem by integrating weather forecast data with sophisticated, granular fire behavior modeling. They are creating their own granular and days-in-advance view of where fires are likely, where they will spread, and which assets and communities could be involved. This approach:
- Captures Complex Relationships: Instead of just looking at the weather, these models incorporate fuel moisture, fuel type, topography, wind speed, wind direction, and other crucial factors to create a more accurate, more granular view for decision-making. They then simulate how these elements interact to influence fire spread across their service territory and assets.
- Quantifies Risk: By simulating fire spread under forecasted conditions, electric utilities can quantify the potential impacts of a fire. This includes estimating the population at risk, the number of buildings affected, and the acreage potentially burned.
- Identifies High-Risk Areas: Running simulations across a grid allows electric utilities to identify high-risk areas where the combination of fuels, topography, and forecasted weather creates the highest potential for large, damaging fires. Many electric utilities are using this information to do fast-cycle asset hardening or vegetation management days before a potential event. This data also drives longer-term asset-hardening and vegetation management decisions under limited budgets and rate increase abilities.
- Streamlining Data into a Singular View: Electric utilities need to aggregate the results of these simulations into a single, easily digestible product, such as a “fire size potential” map, to have actionable information and quicker decision-making for proactive measures.
What’s Next: The Future of Wildfire Management
Electric utilities require granular data that pinpoints specific areas of elevated risk within their service territory, rather than a general regional warning. Integrating weather forecasting with fire behavior modeling is a critical step towards more effective action by electric utilities. It provides the granular, actionable insights that emergency managers at electric utilities need to protect communities and infrastructure in an increasingly wildfire-prone environment.
