THE GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION IS EXTREMELY CONCERNED about the current status of the nation's infrastructure and ways to begin to address this increasingly serious problem. Serious social, political and economic development considerations affect our ability to make progress in this area, which can lead to serious ramifications.

U.S. electric utilities have reached a critical point requiring substantial investment in deteriorating infrastructure. Rapid growth in electricity demand has caused congestion in the transmission and distribution system. This congestion prohibits utilities from making planned outages to perform the necessary maintenance, which will lead to more failures in the grid in the coming years.

Since 1990, electricity demand has increased by about 25%, while new construction of transmission facilities decreased by nearly 30%. As a result, substantial investment in generation, transmission and distribution is critical over the next two decades if electric utility capacity and infrastructure resilience are to improve. These investments will involve new technologies that improve the existing electric system and possibly advanced technologies that will revolutionize the electric grid, including the expanded use of geospatial technology.

EMERGENCY RESPONSE

In addition to improving the condition of their infrastructure, the nation's electric utilities are examining their security practices, performing vulnerability assessments, improving resilience and making appropriate enhancements to their security programs. Such enhancements include supplementing current emergency plans with terrorist risk elements, strengthening physical barriers, tightening control access, adjusting frequency of patrols — both physically and virtually — and confirming response and recovery actions with local law and emergency officials.

Cross-sector partnerships that are aligned with critical infrastructure-protection capabilities and are coordinated with federal, state and local emergency-response protocols can advance the prevention, protection and especially the response to, and recovery from, both terrorist and natural disasters. Currently, these partnerships are not widespread, particularly regarding the engagement of the electric sector.

The data substantiating the need to address electric sector interdependency is overwhelming. Case in point: There are more than 3100 electric utilities in the United States, and these companies operate more than 150,000 miles (241,402 km) of high-voltage electric transmission lines. Among them are 213 stockholder-owned utilities that provide power to more than 70% of the customers; about 2000 municipal or state-owned utilities that provide power to about 15% of the customers; and more than 900 electric cooperatives providing power to about 12% of the customers.

These electric utilities are highly connected and interdependent infrastructure that provide vital services and economic security for a community, region and the nation. Additionally, they provide services essential to other infrastructure sectors during emergency-response efforts, including providing power to pump water for fire protection as well as dozens of critical services essential to the recovery of areas impacted by natural disasters or terrorist events.

While electric utilities have made vast improvements in the areas of security and emergency response, many utilities still lack coherent local and regional partnerships across multiple sectors in order to prepare for, and effectively respond to, man-made threats and natural disasters. Building on accomplishments from both inside and outside the electric sector, GITA has been providing information to electric utility personnel, as well as key stakeholders in other sectors, on critical nature of electric utility interdependencies.

INFRASTRUCTURE INTERDEPENDENCIES

Electric infrastructure have several interdependencies with other infrastructure that must be considered when identifying and classifying critical infrastructure, developing response plans, and addressing other issues of security and protection.

Many electric utilities are generally prepared for local and regional responses; however, the national electric grid as a whole lacks a significant degree of resilience should a much-broader response be required. Future investments in the system must improve system robustness, redundancy and rapid recovery.

Additionally, new technologies and behavioral changes focused on reduction and increased efficiency are necessary. True system resilience will require a national effort to modernize the electric grid to enhance security and the reliability of the energy infrastructure, and to facilitate recovery from disruptions to energy supply, from both natural and man-made hazards.

David DiSera (ddisera@ema-inc.com) is GITA's Research Committee chair and past president. He is a vice president and CTO with EMA Inc. and manages its North American IT Consulting Practice.