Seismic Resilience of Electric Power Networks in Urban Areas

Recent natural disasters have raised the question of how communities can recover from extreme events. In the last decade, the research has been focusing on analyzing interdependencies between different networks. This paper deals with the distribution power network, developing a method to estimate a realistic grid of a virtual city called “Ideal City” freely inspired to the city of Turin in Italy. A software called Matpower, developed by the Joint Research Center, has been used for the load flow analysis of the power network. Fragility curves, repair costs and downtime are evaluated using FEMA’s database. Finally, a strategy to improve the network resilience is proposed considering the complexity of the environment.