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Application of Cyber-Informed Engineering for Protecting BESS

This white paper synthesizes an array of crucial grid services provided by BESS technology, assesses its architecture and communications, and presents a case study for analysis against the principles introduced by Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE). Furthermore, in walking through the analysis, this paper presents a framework to evaluate risks and solutions when considering BESS components. Asset owners and buyers could perform this analysis to assess their BESS product implementations, alternative inverter-based resources (IBR), and energy management systems (EMS). Battery systems fulfill various roles contingent on the unique market demands and the specific challenges presented by regional grid infrastructures. These roles also vary due to the differing utility models for ownership and operation, which are adapted to meet regional and local capabilities and requirements. Concerns have been raised regarding the potential for adversaries to exploit knowledge of battery operational patterns to orchestrate decisive attacks. However, the security of operational data for these systems may not be the primary vulnerability, as much of this information is already well-understood within the community. Applying a modest degree of subject matter expertise can often yield valuable predictions regarding how a battery will respond under certain conditions, such as grid emergencies, high or low-temperature days, Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events, and outages. The operational characteristics of batteries are well-documented, and their capabilities, including the risks associated with misoperation and the resulting consequences, are published and understood within the industry. CIE practices represent the next step in gaining functional assurance and providing an acceptable level of risk, regardless of whether a battery vendor can support a trusted and validated supply chain. While this issue has exacerbated supply chain challenges, it is not an isolated condition. This foreign supply route is the primary source of BESS for the U.S. market. Significant efforts are underway through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) to change that. Still, strategic short-term operational mitigations are needed to ensure the security of our operational technology (OT) systems, which are enhanced by instilling trust and are separate from vendors implementing CIE principles.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Best Practices for Resilience Hub Development and Management

The Carbon League and its community partners in East St. Louis, Illinois, have identified five facilities to serve as resilience hubs. These hubs are intended to support the local community through a range of services and resources during blue-sky (everyday), gray-sky (pre-event), and black-sky (emergency) conditions. Transforming these facilities into fully functional resilience hubs requires a broad operational improvement and programmatic planning roadmap. This memo outlines best practices to guide the development of these resilience hubs in East St. Louis, including recommendations for infrastructure services; safety and physical protection; community services; operational protocols; and a phased implementation strategy aligned with realistic funding and capacity constraints. Infrastructure recommendations include strengthening electric power, communications, water, sanitation, and transportation/logistics capabilities, all of which are essential for hubs that may serve as cooling and warming centers, distribution points, and information hubs during emergencies. Safety recommendations focus on accessibility, emergency action planning, indoor air quality, and secure storage of critical equipment. A phased roadmap provides guidance from immediate, low-cost readiness actions to long-term optimization and community integration. Performance metrics and maintenance protocols ensure continuous improvement and operational readiness. This guidance draws on best practices that can be used to support the development of resilient, community-centered hubs capable of enhancing public safety, health, and well-being during everyday operations and emergencies alike.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Power System Waveform Datasets for Machine Learning

The desire for increased visibility across the electricity grid will necessarily increase the deployment of sensing and measurement devices and associated data management needs to unprecedented levels. For the existing sensing and measurement infrastructure, there remains a great amount of “value” yet to be extracted through advanced data management and analytics. Availability of more data will not, by itself, lead to changes in grid visibility, security, and resiliency. To create the predictive and prescriptive environment required to enable new markets and transactions for customer revenue and a reliable grid, the data must be collected, organized, evaluated, and analyzed using sophisticated algorithms to provide actionable information allowing operators and customers to reliably manage an increasingly complex grid. Progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has been largely driven by large, publicly available datasets that can be used to train AI algorithms such as MNIST, a database of handwritten images of digits, and ImageNet, an image database of everyday objects. These types of publicly available databases of real-world training datasets have been largely credited for advancement of image processing, computer vision, and deep learning algorithms that these use cases deploy. However, in the power systems industry to date, there are few databases with proper event labeling, and data access to a publicly available collection of power system event waveforms that will allow users to interact with grid signature data. Publicly available datasets of power system event waveforms, such as the DOE/EPRI dataset, often lack critical metadata or contain limited examples of each event type, and data formats vary widely across these datasets.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Supporting ARPA-E Power Grid Optimization (Final Report)

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Arizona State University (ASU), Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Texas A&M University (TAMU), The University of Texas at Austin (UT), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M) supported the ARPA-E Grid Optimization (GO) Competition by providing a common problem formulation, data format, datasets, evaluation mechanism, scoring, rules, and results that resulted in the awarding of $\$9.24$ million dollars to teams from academia, industry, and national labs for solving three sets of increasingly difficult non-linear, security- constrained AC Optimal Powerflow (AC-OPF) optimization problems in order to increase the efficiency of the US Electric Grid. It is estimated that a 1% increase in efficiency can save $\$1$ billion. Current industry practices typically use a linear DC model (DC-OPF) in order solve the OPF problem within the time constraints of the operation schedule. The GO Competition challenges the best power engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists to make possible operational decisions based on accurate physical models. To accomplish this, the GO Competition created a series of Challenges and funded teams to produce the best solver. Challenge 1 was to solve the security constrained Alternating Current Optimal Power Flow (ACOPF) problem. Challenge 2 extended that to by adding adjustable transformer tap ratios, phase shifting transformers, switchable shunts, price-responsive demand, ramp rate constrained generators and loads, and fast-start unit commitment (UC). Furthermore, Challenge 2 was a maximization problem while Challenge 1 was a minimization problem. While Challenge 3 was being developed, the entrants were invited to find better solutions to the Challenge 2 synthetic datasets with no restrictions on time, hardware, or algorithms. The Challenge 2 solutions turned out to be very good. Challenge 3 expanded the Challenge 2 problem further by using multiperiod dynamic markets, including advisory models for extreme weather events, day-ahead markets, and the real-time markets with an extended look-ahead. These problems included active bid-in demand and topology optimization. Together the Challenges used nearly 30 million CPU hours. Since each team was working on the same problem, using the same data, and running on the same hardware, fair comparisons could be drawn as to the best solver. The datasets were varied enough, however, that the best solver for one dataset was not necessarily the best at another, so cumulative scores were used. The process was managed by the PNNL maintained website https://GOCompetition.energy.gov, where Entrants could find information about the problem, the data, the rules, submit their solver for evaluation, and see the scores of all the competing teams on a Leaderboard. Interest was world-wide but only American teams were eligible for prizes. The Competition has produced 34 journal articles 115 papers and been cited over 500 times in the literature, including 12 dissertations (4 from foreign countries; Columbia (2), Germany, and Italy) and 3 from the DOE ExaScale project. Software developed by Pearl Street Technologies for Challenges 1 and 2 is now deployed by Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and Midcontinent Independent Service Operator (MISO). Other teams have received inquiries from venture capitalists. Google DeepMind has thanked the Competition for making the datasets developed for the Competition public. They are using it to train machine learning models. The larger datasets have billions of unknowns to be solved for, but only a small percent matter in the final solution. Knowing what unknowns are important can dramatically speedup the solution.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Autonomous System Subversion Tactics: Prototypes and Recommended Countermeasures

One of the fielding requirements for Advanced and Small Modular Reactors (AR/SMR) is the ability to support remote and autonomous operations. Autonomous Control Systems (ACS) are found on platforms such as Autonomous Space Vehicles, Cruise Missiles, and advanced driver-assistance systems. Each of these ACS implementations depends upon a set of decision support subsystems responsible for supporting Autonomous Mission Managers (names vary based upon field and author preferences). These Autonomous Mission Managers receive inputs from system sensors (e.g., LIDAR collection from an automobile travelling down a street; transients from a nuclear reactor), and perform a set of classifications (e.g., Red Traffic Light; Small Pedestrian at 10m; Load Rejection; Single Coolant Pump Trip), and then use these classifications in combination with recommendation algorithms to achieve platform goals (e.g., Stop the Vehicle at the Traffic Light, Avoid the Small Pedestrian; Trip the Reactor to prevent a Safety Event). The design, implementation, and fielding of an ACS capability will alter the cyber-attack surface such that existing risk management plans will need to be updated to include how to protect and defend against data-science and decision-support-system attack classes. These attack classes would include protection of the design and training environments where algorithm selection and testing and training data would be obvious attack vectors. These attack classes would also require an informed set of detection and response procedures to identify anomalous behaviors and document best practices for anomaly assessment and vulnerability mitigation and remediation. Last year we published a Cyber Threat Assessment Methodology for Autonomous and Remote Operations for AR/SMRs along with a companion publication on Cyber Attack and Defense Use Cases. The focus of the methodology was on describing and enumerating ACS processes, components, and functions such that security engineers could: evaluate subversion options against the target; identify threat actor attributes and capabilities derived from each subversion option; and identify security controls and response countermeasures. The Use Cases document offered detailed methodology examples including an assessment of a Military Base SMR, an Autonomous System Decision Loop, and implementation of AR/SMR Machine Learning algorithms. Our proposal at the end of last year was to focus on implementation of subversion prototypes related to the last Use Case area: AR/SMR Machine Learning (ML) Algorithms. We included six attack scenarios in our Use Cases paper: a Poisoning Attack against ML functions implemented using an FPGA; a Trojaning Attack against ML classifiers exploiting the excitability of Nuclear Engineers; a Backdooring Attack against ML Training environments to ensure persistence of an attack vector; a False Positive Evasion Attack against multi-factor Access Control Systems using clever inputs; an Inference Attack against ML models by an Insider with access to the Operational environment; and an Adversarial Reprogramming Attack against a Material Access Control Video Surveillance System. At the beginning of this year these six attack scenarios were provided to our research teams at Georgia Tech and Idaho State University and each team successfully implemented a subversion attack against a ML implementation to include transient misclassifications. While this is a notable outcome from this type of research, this paper offers the reader insight into not only how to structure and execute these types of attacks, but into the thought process behind how the researcher investigated the problem space, performed initial algorithm implementation, and the trial-and-error behind arriving at the successful subversion prototypes. We include in this paper a set of associated Scenarios on how these subversion prototypes could be implemented and an initial set of guidance for AR/SMR architects, Nuclear Regulators, and Cyber Defenders to implement awareness and defense capabilities into their current operational portfolios.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Openet: Applications of Satellite-Based Evapotranspiration Data for Water Resources Management in the Western United States

Advancing water security in overallocated river basins globally requires consistent and reproducible information on consumptive use of water that can anchor the development of data-driven solutions to the challenge of balancing water supply and demand. OpenET is a fully automated system for field-scale (30 m), satellite-based mapping of evapotranspiration (ET) at daily, monthly and annual timesteps. OpenET currently provides spatially contiguous data throughout the 23 westernmost states in the continental US, and includes both current information as well as multi-year timeseries of ET. The OpenET consortium has implemented an ensemble of satellite-based ET models (ALEXI/DisALEXI, eeMETRIC, PT-JPL, geeSEBAL, SIMS and SSEBop) on Google Earth Engine, which provides a shared computing platform for collaboration on processing of data from Landsat and other satellites, land cover and meteorological inputs, leading to increased consistency and accuracy across the ensemble of models. Earth Engine also facilitates hosting and distribution of data via open data collections and an application programming interface. We provide updates on the OpenET framework, open data services and data access tools, approach to geographic expansion, recent accuracy assessments, and describe how a user-driven design approach has facilitated successful applications of OpenET data for a wide range of water resource management activities. Applications to date include: use of ET data to improve quantification of ET and consumptive use in Oregon, Utah and the Upper Colorado River Basin; streamlining of water use reporting requirements in the California Delta; support for calculation of water budgets for the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in California; and integration into decision support tools for irrigation management. The use cases demonstrate how satellite-derived ET data that are easily accessed and seen as broadly accepted can accelerate adoption of innovative water management practices at scale, and support advances in the sustainability of water supplies. Uptake and use of data by the OpenET science community has also led to advances in our understanding of the impacts of landcover change, irrigation intensification and wildfire events on hydrology and the water security.

Applications↗

(ODIN): An Open Source, Low-Latency Data Integration & Visualization Framework for the NASA System Wide Safety Project's Disaster Response Safety Demonstration Series

The Open Data Integration Framework (ODIN) is an open source, low latency data integration and visualization framework (https://github.com/NASARace/race-odin) developed under NASA’s System WideSafety Program to demonstrate new safety capabilities designed to improve US airspace operations. Safety demonstrations are a set of increasingly complex (from public safety perspective) disaster response scenarios under which air systems must operate with increased capacity and include: 1) Wildland fire response, 2) Hurricane relief and recovery, 4) Emergency medical delivery via UAS and 4) Urban disaster relief. To accommodate disaster response, ODIN is field deployable and can scale on one or more multi-core, commodity laptops operating with full to limited or intermittent internet connectivity, conditions likely encountered during operations. ODIN runs as webserver with local, persistent data storage to serve either public or a secured, ad hoc network (e.g., an incident command post). The current released ODIN, ODIN-Fire is tailored for wildland fire management incorporating information on satellite overpasses with links to the near real-time data and imagery from the respective agencies. Included are winds data, an important variable for emergency responders and airspace operations, and high-resolution wind forecasts generated by super-computing resources and ingested into ODIN. As an open-source project, ODIN has attracted interest from multiple entities. We will show how 1) a commercial field instrument and data provider uses ODIN to help users visualize, publish and integrate their in-situ sensor network data and 2) ODIN’s capabilities to ingest, integrate and display near-real time satellite data with air traffic and a USFS winds forecast model used in fire response and post-fire assessment. Within NASA ODIN demonstrated novel, near terminal airspace safety capabilities for a project close-out event and previously it monitored the national airspace in real-time to meet an agency milestone. ODIN is presently under development for the anticipated hurricane relief and response demonstration notionally scheduled for the 2025-27 time frame and is available from NASA's github at the above link.

Aeronautics↗

Establishing a Technical Assistance Network to Build Capacity in Southwest Alaska (Southwest Alaska Energy Network - Final Report)

The Southwest Alaska Municipal Conference (SWAMC) is a non-profit regional membership economic development organization that represents the Aleutian/Pribilof Islands, Bristol Bay, and Kodiak regions of southwest Alaska. SWAMC applied for the DOE-OIE Establishment of an Inter-Tribal Technical Assistance Energy Providers Network grant FOA to work with our partners to provide energy planning and project development technical assistance. The project team was made up of SWAMC, three regional organizations, a management consulting firm, and a panel of technical consultants. SWAMC sub-contracted with the three Alaska Native regional non-profit organizations – Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association (APIA), Bristol Bay Native Association (BBNA), and Kodiak Area Native Association (KANA) – to fund full or partial Regional Energy Coordinator (REC) positions. The project period ran from September 2016 to March 2020. The project goal was to help southwest Alaska regional tribal partners and communities to develop efficient and financially sustainable structures for identifying and developing energy projects that enhance community resiliency and energy sustainability. This project established energy coordinators and management structures in the Aleutian, Bristol Bay, and Kodiak regions to expand technical assistance capacity of regional residents; demonstrate this capacity by advancing energy efficiency, heat, and power supply projects; and secure long-term funding commitments to establish a sustained technical assistance structure. The project team expanded technical assistance capacity of energy coordinators and regional stakeholders in several ways: by providing funding for the SWAMC project manager to attend three Office of Indian Energy trainings; for energy coordinators to attend numerous energy conferences; for utility clerks from several villages to receive one-on-one reporting training on Alaska’s Power Cost Equalization electric subsidy program; and for the Kodiak REC to complete the Arctic Remote Energy Networks Academy and NREL’s Executive Energy Leadership Academy. The energy coordinators demonstrated and shared their increased capacity by hosting several public events: SWAMC hosted two full-day energy workshops in February 2017 and 2018; the Kodiak REC hosted seven Energy Committee meetings for Kodiak stakeholders and gave several presentations at other events; and SWAMC and BBNA organized a Bristol Bay Regional Energy Visioning Session in May 2019. The project team created platforms to both share and request information to involve energy stakeholders in this project, including an energy website, a Facebook group, a periodic newsletter, surveys, mass emails, and paper mailers. An increase in regional capacity was demonstrated through several grant awards, including a $1.2 million USDA grant for Akhiok for an electric distribution infrastructure replacement; an AHFC Kickstarter grant for Aleknagik to audit 2 Tribal and 3 City buildings; and installation of an Air Source Heat Pump demonstration project in Atka. Two communities and one region – Ouzinkie (May 2017), Ugashik (July 2017), and the Bristol Bay region (May 2019) – utilized DOE’s technical assistance services to hold Strategic Energy Planning sessions with NREL and DOE facilitation assistance. And in early 2018, SWAMC established a parallel program, funded through a USDA Energy Audit and Renewable Energy Development grant to provide subsidized energy audits for small businesses in the region. SWAMC and partners have now completed energy audits of over 60 businesses (buildings and fishing vessels) and are currently operating a third round of the USDA program. Fifteen of those business owners have now received additional grant funding to cover 25% of the cost of the energy efficiency upgrades identified in the audit. This technical assistance structure will be sustained beyond DOE grant funding in several forms. As a sign of increased grant writing and project management capacity, the Kodiak Regional Energy Coordinator applied for and received a USDA Community Facilities Technical Assistance and Training grant to continue work begun under this program. Energy coordination tasks have been folded into existing economic development positions at SWAMC and at BBNA, ensuring long-term outreach and support in the region.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

The AgMIP GRIDded Crop Modeling Initiative (AgGRID) and the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison (GGCMI)

Climate change is a significant risk for agricultural production. Even under optimistic scenarios for climate mitigation action, present-day agricultural areas are likely to face significant increases in temperatures in the coming decades, in addition to changes in precipitation, cloud cover, and the frequency and duration of extreme heat, drought, and flood events (IPCC, 2013). These factors will affect the agricultural system at the global scale by impacting cultivation regimes, prices, trade, and food security (Nelson et al., 2014a). Global-scale evaluation of crop productivity is a major challenge for climate impact and adaptation assessment. Rigorous global assessments that are able to inform planning and policy will benefit from consistent use of models, input data, and assumptions across regions and time that use mutually agreed protocols designed by the modeling community. To ensure this consistency, large-scale assessments are typically performed on uniform spatial grids, with spatial resolution of typically 10 to 50 km, over specified time-periods. Many distinct crop models and model types have been applied on the global scale to assess productivity and climate impacts, often with very different results (Rosenzweig et al., 2014). These models are based to a large extent on field-scale crop process or ecosystems models and they typically require resolved data on weather, environmental, and farm management conditions that are lacking in many regions (Bondeau et al., 2007; Drewniak et al., 2013; Elliott et al., 2014b; Gueneau et al., 2012; Jones et al., 2003; Liu et al., 2007; M¨uller and Robertson, 2014; Van den Hoof et al., 2011;Waha et al., 2012; Xiong et al., 2014). Due to data limitations, the requirements of consistency, and the computational and practical limitations of running models on a large scale, a variety of simplifying assumptions must generally be made regarding prevailing management strategies on the grid scale in both the baseline and future periods. Implementation differences in these and other modeling choices contribute to significant variation among global-scale crop model assessments in addition to differences in crop model implementations that also cause large differences in site-specific crop modeling (Asseng et al., 2013; Bassu et al., 2014).

climate↗

Lessons Learned for Responsible Use of Cloud in the Cirrus Project, Following the CrowdStrike Outage Event

A disruption in CrowdStrike’s Falcon cybersecurity platform on July 19th, 2024, caused worldwide chaos. This event highlights the imperative need for cloud security measures for networks that are critically reliant on cloud technology. This incident negatively impacted air travel, government networks, and critical infrastructure sectors such as hospitals and financial institutions. While no electric utilities had a physical impact, and few had an IT impact, there were issues created by loss of cloud services, and other interrelated industries. For utilities and energy distribution organizations, understanding and mitigating these risks is essential. The Cirrus tool offers a strategic solution engineered to weave cloud integration seamlessly into the fabric of operational management, thereby enhancing resilience and streamlining efficiency in the face of digital challenges.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

A Framework for the Cross-Sectoral Integration of Multi-Model Impact Projections: Land Use Decisions Under Climate Impacts Uncertainties

Climate change and its impacts already pose considerable challenges for societies that will further increase with global warming (IPCC, 2014a, b). Uncertainties of the climatic response to greenhouse gas emissions include the potential passing of large-scale tipping points (e.g. Lenton et al., 2008; Levermann et al., 2012; Schellnhuber, 2010) and changes in extreme meteorological events (Field et al., 2012) with complex impacts on societies (Hallegatte et al., 2013). Thus climate change mitigation is considered a necessary societal response for avoiding uncontrollable impacts (Conference of the Parties, 2010). On the other hand, large-scale climate change mitigation itself implies fundamental changes in, for example, the global energy system. The associated challenges come on top of others that derive from equally important ethical imperatives like the fulfilment of increasing food demand that may draw on the same resources. For example, ensuring food security for a growing population may require an expansion of cropland, thereby reducing natural carbon sinks or the area available for bio-energy production. So far, available studies addressing this problem have relied on individual impact models, ignoring uncertainty in crop model and biome model projections. Here, we propose a probabilistic decision framework that allows for an evaluation of agricultural management and mitigation options in a multi-impactmodel setting. Based on simulations generated within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), we outline how cross-sectorally consistent multi-model impact simulations could be used to generate the information required for robust decision making. Using an illustrative future land use pattern, we discuss the trade-off between potential gains in crop production and associated losses in natural carbon sinks in the new multiple crop- and biome-model setting. In addition, crop and water model simulations are combined to explore irrigation increases as one possible measure of agricultural intensification that could limit the expansion of cropland required in response to climate change and growing food demand. This example shows that current impact model uncertainties pose an important challenge to long-term mitigation planning and must not be ignored in long-term strategic decision making

farmlands↗

WISP: Watching grid Infrastructure Stealthily through Proxies (Final Technical Report)

The complex interdependencies of cyber systems (sensors and communications), physical grids and associated electricity market operations make protecting electric power grids a significant challenge. The energy sector is constantly under new, targeted, advanced and dangerous cyber-attacks that have the potential to result in the loss of human life. These threats are further exacerbated by our need to modernize the grid. One focus of cyber security research in smart grids is the securing of the SCADA system through advanced intrusion detection systems (IDS) and bad data detection algorithms in state estimation. These methods either require full knowledge of the system topology and parameters or fail to understand the physical behaviors under attack. WISP (Watching grid Infrastructure Stealthily through Proxies) is designed to provide additional protection to the power grid using only publicly available data. In particular, WISP exploits the spatio-temporal nature of the real time locational marginal prices (LMPs), in conjunction with other information such as bids, weather, outages and load data to analyze anomalous power pricing behaviors and then correlate those observations to localize regions of interest and identify potential cyber events. WISP is non-intrusive as the tool is deployed as a service in the Cloud or on premise and provides reliable information to system operators for enhanced situational awareness, without impeding energy delivery functions. The WISP technology comprises three modules: the data-driven anomaly detection core, the vulnerability and risk analysis and the root cause analysis. The data-driven anomaly detection core performs the tasks of feature selection, anomaly detection and attack region localization. The vulnerability and risk analysis module provides system level information of the vulnerable variables and times, assisting the operators in selecting monitoring and protection nodes. The root cause analysis module takes the detection results and identifies potential operational conditions that contribute to the detected anomalies. In Phase I, we have demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of WISP. We developed a realistic electricity market simulator capable of generating normal and attack market data under various operational conditions. We developed a series of cyber-attack detection and analysis algorithms and evaluated them under multiple data sources. Finally, we integrated all modules into an end-to-end software, providing functions for data management, data analytics and visualization. Specifically, we have achieved: (i) real-time data acceptance from external utility interfaces with >99% acceptance rate; (ii) high performance anomaly detection algorithms with >98% detection accuracy and <0.1% false alarm rate; and (iii) ultra-low computing delay <50 milliseconds. Additionally, our team developed algorithms to identify the vulnerable variables in electricity market operations and root cause analysis functions to identify major contributors to the price spikes. These ancillary modules are necessary when deploying WISP in real world industry environment. In Phase II, we have demonstrated the effectiveness of WISP software on realistic largescale power systems. We performed red team testing for the Phase I WISP software and identified software vulnerabilities and implemented corresponding mitigation solutions. We adapted the electricity market simulator for the Texas synthetic 2000-bus system and generated datasets for the false data injection attacks. We created database and visualization interfaces for the Texas system and the ISO New England system. We performed software optimization in terms of operation efficiency, computing speed and detection accuracy. Finally, we tested the software on the Texas system and the ISO New England system and evaluated the detection performance. Overall, we achieved above 89% detection rate, below 3% false alarm rate and below 37 seconds of end-to-end detection delay.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

NIRP Core Software Suite v.5.1

SAND2023-06610O The Nuclear Incident Response Program (NIRP) Core Software Suite is a set of code that supports multiple applications. It includes miscellaneous base code for data objects, mathematic equations, and user interface components that are used for developing large applications, including those used for data management. Among the types of applications: • Analyst Manager is used for managing contact information, which is also often included in reports and identifies the owners of calculations. • Radionuclide Viewer provides access to the Dose Coefficient File Package (DCFPAK) radiological data, and it complements the Mixture Manager tool. • Mixture Manager creates and manages radionuclides mixtures that are commonly used in other applications. • High Explosive Manager manages explosives and properties. • Chart Viewer is used for data charts such as meteorology charts and other charts specific to data needs. • Unit Converter converts numeric values to/from different units. This package includes object-oriented base code such as data objects describing the date, time, and location of an event; weather conditions; data types that support predefined ranges of values; a unit library, and others. The package also includes mathematic equations such as determining the distance between two points; erf functions; factorial functions; incidence fractions of probit curves; and others. Other features are customized user interface components for text fields; unit selectors (combo boxes); menus; panels; bug-tracking; and automated checks for software updates. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Collins, Ian↗

JDD, Inc. Database

JDD Inc, is a maintenance and custodial contracting company whose mission is to provide their clients in the private and government sectors "quality construction, construction management and cleaning services in the most efficient and cost effective manners, (JDD, Inc. Mission Statement)." This company provides facilities support for Fort Riley in Fo,rt Riley, Kansas and the NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field here in Cleveland, Ohio. JDD, Inc. is owned and operated by James Vaughn, who started as painter at NASA Glenn and has been working here for the past seventeen years. This summer I worked under Devan Anderson, who is the safety manager for JDD Inc. in the Logistics and Technical Information Division at Glenn Research Center The LTID provides all transportation, secretarial, security needs and contract management of these various services for the center. As a safety manager, my mentor provides Occupational Health and Safety Occupation (OSHA) compliance to all JDD, Inc. employees and handles all other issues (Environmental Protection Agency issues, workers compensation, safety and health training) involving to job safety. My summer assignment was not as considered "groundbreaking research" like many other summer interns have done in the past, but it is just as important and beneficial to JDD, Inc. I initially created a database using a Microsoft Excel program to classify and categorize data pertaining to numerous safety training certification courses instructed by our safety manager during the course of the fiscal year. This early portion of the database consisted of only data (training field index, employees who were present at these training courses and who was absent) from the training certification courses. Once I completed this phase of the database, I decided to expand the database and add as many dimensions to it as possible. Throughout the last seven weeks, I have been compiling more data from day to day operations and been adding the information to the database. It now consists of seven different categories of data (carpet cleaning, forms, NASA Event Schedules, training certifications, wall and vent cleaning, work schedules, and miscellaneous) . I also did some field inspecting with the supervisors around the site and was present at all of the training certification courses that have been scheduled since June 2004. My future outlook for the JDD, Inc. database is to have all of company s information from future contract proposals, weekly inventory, to employee timesheets all in this same database.

Miller, David A., Jr.↗

Net-Zero Carbon Microgrids

The microgrid concept has been effective in creating aggregations of distributed energy resources—generation, storage and loads—for resiliency, in the form of energy security. The success of microgrids in bringing energy security to a wide range of customers—from individual residences to commercial and industrial installations to military bases—has been exemplified during power disruptions and extended outages due to extreme weather events, cybersecurity attacks, and equipment failures. Now microgrids have an opportunity to meet the challenges of climate change and contribute to a carbon-free power delivery system. The transition to net-zero starts within microgrids themselves. In fact, today’s microgrids are largely dominated by generators using fossil fuels, natural gas and diesel, with high greenhouse gas emissions. In short, the transition to net-zero means replacing fossil fueled generators with renewable generation in microgrids. This transition is extended by including new dispatchable generation technologies that are 100% carbon-free and that offer additional advantage of a more-dependable and sustainable source of energy and power. Basically, the decarbonization of microgrids requires three elements: 1) maximizing generation from renewable energy resources, 2) management of storage and flexible loads to balance the variability and intermittency of renewable energy resources, and 3) introducing new clean power sources, including hydrogen-based generation and small modular reactors. This report affirms a need for specific focus by governmental agencies at national, regional, and local levels to establish technology, policy, and investment in this area. The intention of the Net-Zero Microgrid (NZM) Program is to inform these constituencies with cross-cutting research and tools for the reduction of GHG in microgrids – to net-zero in the near term eventually to zero in the longer term. The NZM Program is committed to achieving decarbonization for resiliency and for providing clean energy at the local or distribution level, from remote communities to underserved communities, and large industrial and military facilities. The NZM Planning and Design Platform is a core tool to be developed as an early deliverable of the NZM Program because only a fully integrated microgrid-design approach will ensure maximum carbon reduction in energy production.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Accident Precursor Analysis and Management: Reducing Technological Risk Through Diligence

Almost every year there is at least one technological disaster that highlights the challenge of managing technological risk. On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia and her crew were lost during reentry into the atmosphere. In the summer of 2003, there was a blackout that left millions of people in the northeast United States without electricity. Forensic analyses, congressional hearings, investigations by scientific boards and panels, and journalistic and academic research have yielded a wealth of information about the events that led up to each disaster, and questions have arisen. Why were the events that led to the accident not recognized as harbingers? Why were risk-reducing steps not taken? This line of questioning is based on the assumption that signals before an accident can and should be recognized. To examine the validity of this assumption, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) undertook the Accident Precursors Project in February 2003. The project was overseen by a committee of experts from the safety and risk-sciences communities. Rather than examining a single accident or incident, the committee decided to investigate how different organizations anticipate and assess the likelihood of accidents from accident precursors. The project culminated in a workshop held in Washington, D.C., in July 2003. This report includes the papers presented at the workshop, as well as findings and recommendations based on the workshop results and committee discussions. The papers describe precursor strategies in aviation, the chemical industry, health care, nuclear power and security operations. In addition to current practices, they also address some areas for future research.

Phimister, James R.↗

A Method for Measuring Coupled Individual and Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards

Although models of social vulnerability to environmental hazards are commonly developed to support policy interventions in emergencies and disasters, their utility is hindered by a lack of contextual information on individuals exposed to and affected by hazards. We develop a novel approach to model social vulnerability that couples individuals and their varying forms of protective capacity with the social fabric of the communities in which they reside. The backbone of our model is the Public-Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), a product of the U.S. Census Bureau that preserves a representative sample of completed responses to the American Community Survey (ACS). The PUMS enables us to understand the full range of individual protective capacities against a hazard in an exposed area, which we term individual vulnerability profiles (IVPs). In this case, we examine IVPs in the Coney Island-Brighton Beach section of New York City, which suffered severe impacts during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. To manage the large number of unique IVPs in Coney Island-Brighton Beach, we perform a segmentation analysis to generalize them into thematic cohort vulnerability profiles (CVPs) representing a typology of vulnerable people in Coney Island-Brighton Beach during Sandy. From synthetic populations of CVPs, we then estimate how individuals in varying housing types were coexposed to Sandy at the census tract level by classifying these areas into community social vulnerability profiles (SVPs). Our results provide a topology of social vulnerability that simultaneously links individual, community, and population-wide concerns, enabling a more holistic understanding of resources and interventions beneficial to human security during events like Sandy than is attainable with area-level metrics.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

The evolution of the Human Systems and Simulation Laboratory in nuclear power research

The events at Three Mile Island in the United States brought about fundamental changes in the ways that simulation would be used in nuclear operations. The need for research simulators was identified to scientifically study human-centered risk and make recommendations for process control system designs. This paper documents the human factors research conducted at the Human Systems and Simulation Laboratory (HSSL) since its inception in 2010 at Idaho National Laboratory. The facility’s primary purposes are to provide support to utilities for system upgrades and to validate modernized control room concepts. In the last decade, however, as nuclear industry needs have evolved, so too have the purposes of the HSSL. Thus, beyond control room modernization, human factors researchers have evaluated the security of nuclear infrastructure from cyber adversaries and evaluated human-in-the-loop simulations for joint operations with an integrated hydrogen generation plant. Lastly, our review presents research using human reliability analysis techniques with data collected from HSSL-based studies and concludes with potential future directions for the HSSL, including severe accident management and advanced control room technologies.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗