Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “vulnerability assessments”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 289 records · Page 16

Emergent temperature sensitivity of soil organic carbon driven by mineral associations

Abstract Soil organic matter decomposition and its interactions with climate depend on whether the organic matter is associated with soil minerals. However, data limitations have hindered global-scale analyses of mineral-associated and particulate soil organic carbon pools and their benchmarking in Earth system models used to estimate carbon cycle–climate feedbacks. Here we analyse observationally derived global estimates of soil carbon pools to quantify their relative proportions and compute their climatological temperature sensitivities as the decline in carbon with increasing temperature. We find that the climatological temperature sensitivity of particulate carbon is on average 28% higher than that of mineral-associated carbon, and up to 53% higher in cool climates. Moreover, the distribution of carbon between these underlying soil carbon pools drives the emergent climatological temperature sensitivity of bulk soil carbon stocks. However, global models vary widely in their predictions of soil carbon pool distributions. We show that the global proportion of model pools that are conceptually similar to mineral-protected carbon ranges from 16 to 85% across Earth system models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 and offline land models, with implications for bulk soil carbon ages and ecosystem responsiveness. To improve projections of carbon cycle–climate feedbacks, it is imperative to assess underlying soil carbon pools to accurately predict the distribution and vulnerability of soil carbon.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Defensive Islanding to Enhance the Resilience of Distribution Systems Against Cyber-Induced Failures

The extensive integration of communication, computation, and control technologies into cyber-physical power systems (CPPSs) has increased the vulnerabilities of CPPSs to cyberattacks. This calls for developing solutions that assess and reduce the impacts of cyber-induced failures on CPPSs. This paper proposes a defensive islanding strategy to isolate impacted parts of the CPPS and form self-sufficient islanded grids with an objective of minimum load curtailment. The defensive islanding aims to split a power system into smaller grids to improve its resilience against a potential extreme event. A clustering approach that leverages the hierarchical spectral clustering method is utilized for the optimal defensive islanding. The proposed approach captures the fragility behavior and loading conditions of power system components due to cyber-induced failures. A graphical-based coupling framework is used to map the impacts of cyber failures into operation of power system components. The proposed method is demonstrated on a modified 33-node distribution feeder system integrated with distributed energy resources. The amount of load curtailment and radiality constraints have been used to evaluate the performance of the proposed clustering strategies. The results show the capability of the proposed algorithm to create islands considering the cyber-induced failures for enhanced resilience.

cyber-induced failures↗

Wildfire Risk Evaluation Framework for Grid Operations and Planning

The United States (US) environmental protection agency's (EPA's) climate change indicators for wildfires show a long-term trend of increased annual wildfire activity, larger wildfire size, and more variable dynamics in wildfire behavior. This has caused more frequent preemptive public safety power shutoff (PSPS) events in the regions with recognized high wildfire risk. These preemptive power shutoffs attempt to prevent the ignition of a wildfire but it nonetheless renders the transmission line non-operational, which often sheds load of downstream communities. As wildfires and PSPS events become more frequent, it is crucial to find the communities most at risk of load shedding. To that end, this paper proposes the wildfire risk evaluation of the system (WiRES) framework, which is a performance-based framework that translates extreme weather-related and PSPS event probabilities into a cumulative probability of a non-operational transmission line. This study also provides a geospatial visualization tool that breaks down the entire western electrical coordinating council (WECC) region into 50 km grid cells which can be used to 1) filter out transmission lines with higher than a threshold outage probability, and 2) graphically discover the affected regions and their biophysical and socioeconomic metrics. %such as the social vulnerability index, population density, gross domestic product, etc. Lastly, an impact assessment study is conducted which connects the results of the proposed framework to python and powerworld-based contingency analysis to highlight the applicability of the framework.

Wildfire, Resilience, Extreme Events, Grid Reslien↗

Field Insights: Strengthening Digital Assurance Through On-Site Network Monitoring

The accelerating deployment of digital energy infrastructure, ranging from inverter-based resources (IBRs), battery energy storage systems (BESS), to advanced grid control platforms, has brought unprecedented visibility, flexibility, and efficiency to the electric grid. However, this digital transformation also introduces new cybersecurity challenges, particularly in the form of supply chain risks and operational blind spots at the grid edge. Over the past year, the Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), through its Rapid Risk Assessment initiative, along with the Grid Deployment Office (GDO), through its Technical Assistance for Digital Assurance (TADA) initiative, have supported a series of on-site network engagements led by Idaho National Laboratory (INL). These engagements, conducted in partnership with asset owners across the country, have focused on identifying real-world vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in operational environments, many of which are not detectable through remote assessments or traditional compliance audits. The goal of this report is to distill key findings and lessons learned during network hunt engagements from INL’s fiscal year (FY) 2024 - 2025. It is intended to help asset owners—regardless of their participation in the program—better understand the evolving threat landscape and adopt practical measures to secure their digital energy infrastructure.

24 - POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Economic losses from extreme weather in the U.S. Gulf Coast region: spatially differential contributions of climate hazard and socioeconomic exposure and vulnerability

Worldwide economic losses from extreme weather events (EWE) have increased over recent decades, with significant geographic heterogeneity in damages. The IPCC defines the risk from EWE as a function of the climate hazard, socioeconomic exposure, and vulnerability. Although these three drivers vary at fine spatial scales, spatial variability largely has been overlooked in assessments of the drivers of economic loss from EWE. Using cluster analysis, we developed a novel socio-climate hazard typology (SCT) that integrates locally defined climate hazard and socioeconomic exposure and social vulnerability typologies. The results identified 838 unique SCT types impacted by EWE across the Gulf Coastal United States during 1981–2010. We regressed the SCT types and their constituent hazard and socioeconomic components against the cumulative economic loss (1981–2010) from EWE for each SCT type. Across the landscape, economic damages of SCT types were determined by unique, spatially explicit combinations of different risk factors, even in explaining the same level of economic loss. For example, multi-billion-dollar damages in the central Gulf Coast and peninsular Florida were explained by different drivers of risk, with damages in the former explained by additive interaction between climate hazard and multiplicative interaction between climate hazard and socioeconomic exposure and vulnerability, and in the latter explained by socioeconomic exposure and vulnerability. These results highlight the need to diagnose additive and multiplicative interactions among drivers of EWE risk in a spatially explicit context.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Towards Real-time Global Assessment of Post-fire Debris Flow Hazard

As the risk of wildfires increases worldwide, burned steeplands are vulnerable to the secondary hazard of widespread sediment mobilization through debris flows. Following an initial burn, sediment and soil previously restrained by vegetation are no longer consolidated, allowing for easy mobilization into channels and along steep hillslopes through runoff. Sufficiently powerful rainfall incorporates entrained material into turbulent flows and serves as the primary trigger for debris flow initiation. There is thus an ongoing need to establish the relationship between rainfall and debris flow initiation based on a variety of spatiotemporal preconditions. Previous work establishes regional and local thresholds to constrain the effect of rainfall in recently burned areas, but no empirical or numerical solution has worldwide application. Building from regionally-based efforts in the U.S., this work considers how remote sensing data can be applied to better approximate the post-fire debris flow hazards worldwide using freely available global datasets and software. Our work assesses the utility of remote sensing resources for analyzing burn characteristics, topography, rainfall intensity/duration, and, thus, debris flow initiation. Early results show that global observations are sufficient to delineate background rainfall rates from storms likely to cause debris flows across a variety of burn severity and topographic conditions. However, the dearth of publicly-available post-fire debris flow inventories globally limit the ability to test how the model framework performs within different climatologic and morphologic areas. This work will present preliminary analysis over the Western United States and demonstrate the feasibility of a global, near-real time model to provide situational awareness of potential hazards within recently burned areas worldwide. Future work will also consider how global or regional precipitation forecasts may increase the lead time for improved early warning of these hazards.

Elijah Orland↗

Hydropower Cyber-Physical Configurations

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office funded Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop a typology to characterize the variety and pervasiveness of cyber-physical configurations across the nation’s hydropower fleet. Outreach to owners and operators returned configurations for 275 hydropower plants or approximately 12% of the fleet. Components (OT and IT), systems, and connections among systems differed among plants according to function, age, position in the river cascade, and many other factors. Seven cyber-physical configuration types labeled A through I, included from 2 to dozens of plants. They were differentiated by how pervasive data and control connections were among cyber-physical components and how frequently control signals paired with data signals in a feedback loop. The flow of data and control within each type implies what cybersecurity vulnerabilities may exist, and what mitigation actions may be most effective. A self-assessment approach allows plant operators to identify the configuration type similar to their plant and link to the lessons learned and best practices information. The cyber-physical typology reinforces the idea that hydropower facilities vary widely, but it also identifies groups that highlight similarities in how their cyber-physical components interact. This helps address fleetwide cybersecurity needs by identifying a reasonable number of configuration types that share risks, vulnerabilities, and potential mitigations.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Cincinnati & Covington Urban Development II: Assessing Flooding and Landslide Susceptibility Along the Ohio-Kentucky Border

Landslides and flooding are reoccurring environmental hazards that lead to health risks and economic burdens in the urban areas of Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky. These communities share underlying natural and artificial conditions that make them vulnerable to these hazards, including excessive precipitation, weak lithology, high impervious surface levels, and steep slopes. Despite the human and economic risks associated with these environmental hazards, the areas of highest vulnerability within the region remain unknown. NASA DEVELOP partnered with Groundwork USA and Groundwork Ohio River Valley (ORV) to assess the region’s susceptibility to landslides and flooding. The team utilized NASA Earth observations, including the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrieval for GPM (IMERG), alongside ancillary datasets to map landslide susceptibility and exposure throughout the study area. The team also used ancillary data to map surface runoff and runoff retention using the Natural Capital Project’s Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) Urban Flood Risk Mitigation Model. The resulting landslide susceptibility and exposure maps highlight the neighborhoods around Avondale and Fairmount as areas of particularly high landslide exposure. Meanwhile, the InVEST outputs demonstrate that Downtown Cincinnati and the Queensgate neighborhood retain the least amount of rainfall. This research provides partners with a more complete hazard analysis of the greater Cincinnati area while also producing refined methodologies to enhance future flood and landslide vulnerability mapping throughout Groundwork USA’s nationwide network of communities.

Paxton LaJoie↗

Flood Hazard Assessment from Storm Tides, Rain and Sea Level Rise for a Tidal River Estuary

Cities and towns along the tidal Hudson River are highly vulnerable to flooding through the combination of storm tides and high streamflows, compounded by sea level rise. Here a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model, validated by comparing peak water levels for 76 historical storms, is applied in a probabilistic flood hazard assessment. In simulations, the model merges streamflows and storm tides from tropical cyclones (TCs), offshore extratropical cyclones (ETCs) and inland "wet extratropical" cyclones (WETCs). The climatology of possible ETC and WETC storm events is represented by historical events (1931-2013), and simulations include gauged streamflows and inferred ungauged streamflows (based on watershed area) for the Hudson River and its tributaries. The TC climatology is created using a stochastic statistical model to represent a wider range of storms than is contained in the historical record. TC streamflow hydrographs are simulated for tributaries spaced along the Hudson, modeled as a function of TC attributes (storm track, sea surface temperature, maximum wind speed) using a statistical Bayesian approach. Results show WETCs are important to flood risk in the upper tidal river (e.g., Albany, New York), ETCs are important in the estuary (e.g., New York City) and lower tidal river, and TCs are important at all locations due to their potential for both high surge and extreme rainfall. The raising of floods by sea level rise is shown to be reduced by approximately 30-60 percent at Albany due to the dominance of streamflow for flood risk. This can be explained with simple channel flow dynamics, in which increased depth throughout the river reduces frictional resistance, thereby reducing the water level slope and the upriver water level.

Tidal river↗

A novel approach to mitigating the potential release of radioisotopes under fire conditions - enhancing fire resiliency of radiological contamination fixatives during deactivation & decommissioning activities

Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), in close collaboration with the Florida International University Applied Research Center (FIU ARC), successfully executed a technology development activity on behalf of the Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management (DOE EM). The purpose of the activity was to improve the capability of fixative technologies in immobilizing residual contamination when exposed to thermal stressors as postulated in accident scenarios in Basis for Interim Operations (BIO) documents across the DOE EM complex. The effort resulted in the test and evaluation of a down-selected, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) intumescent technology in a radioactive environment at the Savannah River Site (SRS) Building 235-F Plutonium Fuel Form (PuFF) Facility and highlighted the potential use of this technology as a stand-alone, fire retardant fixative. Furthermore, this activity highlighted significant shortfalls in common fixatives currently used to support decommissioning activities and brought to the forefront the need for a methodical, uniformed approach to certifying fixative technologies for operational use in Deactivation and Decommissioning (D&D) activities. An essential component of this research was to evaluate the state of industry fixatives currently in use and set the foundation for comparison to alternative technological solutions. A baseline of five (5) commonly used fixatives and decontamination gels (hereafter collectively referred to as fixatives) was conducted, and notable shortfalls and deficiencies were revealed, particularly when exposed to thermal, water, and other environmental stressors. At temperatures as low as 300 °F - 400 °F (148.89 °C – 204.44 °C), all commonly used fixatives melted from the substrates within 3-5 minutes of exposure, resulting in contaminant transport. Significant degradation in terms of mass loss, desiccation, and off-gassing occurred, and the chemical breakdown of the polymer was so complete researchers assessed there would likely have been a release of residual contamination. Additional vulnerabilities became evident when exposed to water immersion and high humidity; existing fixatives took up water, swelling and frequently delaminating from the substrate, once again increasing the likelihood of a contaminant release.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Managing a Vulnerability Testing Program

A good vulnerability testing program can help reduce system compromises, provide a way of assessing and measuring improvements in security, and motivate everyone to get involved.

Ray, John↗

4D electrical resistivity tomography for assessing the influence of vegetation and subsurface moisture on railway cutting condition

Instability of slopes, embankments, and cuttings on the railway network is increasingly prevalent globally. Monitoring vulnerable infrastructure aids in geotechnical asset management, and improvements to transport safety and efficiency. Here, we examine the use of a novel, near-real-time Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) monitoring system for assessing the stability of a railway cutting in Leicestershire, United Kingdom. In 2015, an ERT monitoring system was installed across a relict landslide (grassed) and an area of more stable ground on either side (wooded), to monitor changes in electrical resistivity through time and space, and to assess the influence of different types of vegetation on the stability of transportation infrastructure. Two years of 4-Dimensional ERT monitoring results are presented here, and petrophysical relationships developed in the laboratory are applied to calibrate the resistivity models in order to provide an insight into hydrogeological pathways within a railway cutting. The influence of vegetation type on subsurface moisture pathways and on slope stability is also assessed – here we find that seasonal subsurface changes in moisture content and soil suction are exacerbated by the presence of trees (wooded area). This results in shrink-swell behaviour of the clays comprising the railway cutting, resulting in fissuring and a reduction in shear strength, leading to instability. As such, it is proposed that on slopes comprised of expansive soils, grassed slopes are beneficial for stability. Insights into the use of 4-D ERT for monitoring railway infrastructure gained from this study may be applied to the monitoring of critical geotechnical assets elsewhere.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Environmental DNA as a tool for hydropower impact assessments: current status, special considerations, and future integration

Globally there is an urgent need to find sustainable solutions to balance energy production with the protection of vulnerable species and conservation of biodiversity. This is particularly critical for freshwater ecosystems, habitats, and species that may be impacted by hydropower development and operations needed to meet energy grid demands. Reliable and accurate environmental impact assessments (EIAs) that identify the biological, physical, or social impacts of hydropower are key to ensure biodiversity, ecosystem, and societal sustainability. The analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) has the potential to transform hydropower EIAs, management and mitigation planning, and decision-making procedures. Further, the incorporation of eDNA surveys into EIAs during both hydropower planning and continued operations may streamline regulatory processes by improving our understanding of potentially impacted biota and habitats and evaluating environmental impacts mitigation. Here, we: (i) highlight current understanding and use of eDNA in freshwater environments; (ii) examine critical considerations for eDNA integration into hydropower EIAs and biological monitoring; (iii) identify knowledge gaps in eDNA analysis and applications unique to hydropower-regulated systems; and (iv) discuss future opportunities to bolster the incorporation of eDNA into hydropower research including regulatory acceptance and public engagement. While we acknowledge that there are several factors that may complicate the broad adoption of eDNA as a tool for assessing the impacts of hydropower, we anticipate that growing confidence in eDNA through hydropower-specific protocols, calibrations, and validations will overcome these inherent uncertainties.

aquatic biodiversity↗

Dust Hazard Management in the Outer Solar System

Most robotic missions to the outer solar system must grapple with the hazards posed by the dusty rings of the gas giants. Early assessments of these hazards led simply to ring avoidance due to insufficient data and high uncertainties on the dust population present in such rings. Recent approaches, principal among them the Cassini dust hazard management strategy, provide useful results from detailed modeling of spacecraft vulnerabilities and dust hazard regions, which along with the range of mission trajectories are used to to assess the risks posed by each passage through a zone of potential hazard. This paper shows the general approach used to implement the analysis for Cassini, with recommendations for future outer planet missions.

mission hazards↗

The Hazard Components of Representative Key Risks. The Physical Climate Perspective

The framework of Representative Key Risks (RKRs) has been adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II (WGII) to categorize, assess and communicate a wide range of regional and sectoral key risks from climate change. These are risks expected to become severe due to the potentially detrimental convergence of changing climate conditions with the exposure and vulnerability of human and natural systems. Other papers in this special issue treat each of eight RKRs holistically by assessing their current status and future evolution as a result of this convergence. However, in these papers, such assessment cannot always be organized according to a systematic gradation of climatic changes. Often the big-picture evolution of risk has to be extrapolated from either qualitative effects of “low”, “medium” and “high” warming, or limited/focused analysis of the consequences of particular mitigation choices (e.g., benefits of limiting warming to 1.5 or 2C), together with consideration of the socio-economic context and possible adaptation choices. In this study we offer a representation – as systematic as possible given current literature and assessments – of the future evolution of the hazard components of RKRs. We identify the relevant hazards for each RKR, based upon the WGII authors’ assessment, and we report on their current state and expected future changes in magnitude, intensity and/or frequency, linking these changes to Global Warming Levels (GWLs) to the extent possible. We draw on the assessment of changes in climatic impact-drivers relevant to RKRs described in the 6th Assessment Report by Working Group I supplemented when needed by more recent literature. For some of these quantities - like regional trends in oceanic and atmospheric temperature and precipitation, some heat and precipitation extremes, permafrost thaw and Northern Hemisphere snow cover - a strong and quantitative relationship with increasing GWLs has been identified. For others - like frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones and extra-tropical storms, and fire weather - that link can only be described qualitatively. For some processes - like the behavior of ice sheets, or changes in circulation dynamics - large uncertainties about the effects of different GWLs remain, and for a few others - like ocean pH and air pollution - the composition of the scenario of anthropogenic emissions is most relevant, rather than the warming reached. In almost all cases, however, the basic message remains that every small increment in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and associated warming will bring changes in climate phenomena that will contribute to increasing risk of impacts on human and natural systems, in the absence of compensating changes in these systems’ exposure and vulnerability, and in the absence of effective adaptation. Our picture of the evolution of RKR-relevant climatic impact-drivers complements and enriches the treatment of RKRs in the other papers in at least two ways: by filling in their often only cursory or limited representation of the physical climate aspects driving impacts, and by providing a fuller representation of their future potential evolution, an important component – if never the only one – of the future evolution of risk severity.

Representative Key Risks↗

Risk Assessment Overview

Risk assessment is used in many industries to identify and manage risks. Initially developed for use on aeronautical and nuclear systems, risk assessment has been applied to transportation, chemical, computer, financial, and security systems among others. It is used to gain an understanding of the weaknesses or vulnerabilities in a system so modification can be made to increase operability, efficiency, and safety and to reduce failure and down-time. Risk assessment results are primary inputs to risk-informed decision making; where risk information including uncertainty is used along with other pertinent information to assist management in the decision-making process. Therefore, to be useful, a risk assessment must be directed at specific objectives. As the world embraces the globalization of trade and manufacturing, understanding the associated risk become important to decision making. Applying risk assessment techniques to a global system of development, manufacturing, and transportation can provide insight into how the system can fail, the likelihood of system failure and the consequences of system failure. The risk assessment can identify those elements that contribute most to risk and identify measures to prevent and mitigate failures, disruptions, and damaging outcomes. In addition, risk associated with public and environment impact can be identified. The risk insights gained can be applied to making decisions concerning suitable development and manufacturing locations, supply chains, and transportation strategies. While risk assessment has been mostly applied to mechanical and electrical systems, the concepts and techniques can be applied across other systems and activities. This paper provides a basic overview of the development of a risk assessment.

Prassinos, Peter G.↗

Robust Power System Stability Assessment Against Adversarial Machine Learning-Based Cyberattacks via Online Purification

The increasing complexity associated with renewable generation brings more challenges to power system stability assessment (SA). Data-driven approaches based on machine learning (ML) techniques for stability assessment have received significant research interest and shown their promising performance. However, ML-based models are recognized to be vulnerable to adversarial disturbances, where a slight perturbation to power system measurements could lead to unacceptable errors. To address this issue, this paper develops a novel lightweight mitigation strategy, i.e., robust online stability assessment (ROSA), to enhance the ML-based assessment model against both white-box and the black-box adversarial disturbances (i.e., purification) in the online implementation. The ROSA involves a supervised learning-based module for the primary stability assessment and a self-supervised learning-based module. Further, the two modules are trained jointly with different objective (loss) functions and implemented in sequence. A suitable purification objective and various time-series data augmentation methods are designed for SA applications to tackle adversarial disturbances adaptively. Case studies are performed, and the comparative results have clearly illustrated the competitive, robust accuracy against various adversarial scenarios and verified the effectiveness of the proposed online purification strategy.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Cybersecurity concerns for the energy sector in the maritime domain

The world has seen a number of high-profile maritime disasters in recent months and years, and has felt the impact of them. At the same time, the world has also seen a number of high-profile cyberattacks. It has felt their impact, as well. And, likely no sector has been more affected by the maritime and cyber incidents than the energy sector, as fuel prices often spike or trough, and access to energy resources can become an instant source of concern, tension, or even conflict. As energy sectors—in all their forms—continue to rely on the maritime domain or even increase that reliance, they must be mindful that traditional maritime threats—like piracy, theft, and weather events—are not the only threats they face today. Maritime cybersecurity concerns are among the most potentially disruptive to energy-sector interests and, yet, are among the least understood and least addressed. This paper identifies nine areas in which the energy sector faces harmful cyber vulnerabilities in the maritime domain, to provide enough insight and examples to allow for action to be taken to reduce the risk of harm from these different vulnerabilities. The paper develops the example of offshore wind energy to model how to assess cyber considerations more fully. Ultimately, it concludes with a series of recommendations that offer policymakers, energy-sector actors, and security and law-enforcement professionals steps to minimize the exposure of the maritime energy sector to harmful cyberattacks.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗