Electric Power and Energy Systems Webinar with Ian Dobson: Sampling from High Impact Rare Events to Quantify Resilience

Speaker: Ian Dobson, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University

Title: Sampling from High Impact Rare Events to Quantify Resilience

Abstract: The most impactful infrastructure failures are also the rarest, so we need to understand high impact low probability events to grapple with the resilience of the electrical grid. These high impact low probability events occur in the heavy tails of probability distributions, and I will discuss strategies for effectively sampling from these distributions to properly account for the extreme events. The sampling schemes can be applied to conventional simulation of cascading failure, as well as new forms of data-driven simulation that quantify resilience without detailed modeling. As time permits, I will discuss applications of these methods to joint work with the University of Vermont and Cornell University.

Biography: Ian Dobson was educated at Cambridge and Cornell and previously worked in British industry and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is professor of engineering at Iowa State University with interests in electric power grid blackouts and resilience, probabilistic methods, and complex and nonlinear systems. Ian is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Instructions for connecting to the ISU EPES Webinar (via Zoom): https://iastate.zoom.us/j/97550118194