Using AHA, Boise State students are experimenting with real problems and real data impacting the energy sector today. “We are using AHA to look more holistically across our energy infrastructure and to learn where vulnerabilities in the system exist so that we can focus on mitigation before they become problems in the future.” “The concept of resilience is important, not only to the electric grid, but to all of the other critical infrastructures that feed into the electric grid,” says INL researcher Ryan Hruska. INL’s Kelly Wilson talks to Boise State University students about the laboratory’s infrastructure resilience programs including the All Hazards Analysis tool. In the past, the tool has been used in other INL research, and by state and federal government partners to guide policy decisions and to understand risk. It can identify interdependencies within the infrastructure systems and help decision-makers to understand how and where the infrastructure systems interrelate. The tool is used to simulate possible scenarios that might impact critical infrastructure, from natural disasters to addition of new equipment. As the infrastructure changes, AHA is updated. In a first-of-its-kind partnership between Boise State and INL’s Infrastructure Assurance and Analysis Group, the INL researchers have supplied students with cloud-based access to the All Hazards Analysis Framework (AHA), a specialized tool that INL has developed to guide research and policy decision-making.ĪHA is a dynamic analytical framework that utilizes data about critical infrastructure to enable knowledge discovery and decision support. The new course, 21 st Century Opportunities and Challenges in Energy – Strategic Decision-making about Systems Change, is a unique offering in problem-directed learning for 20 undergraduate and graduate students from four schools at Boise State. “As energy users, we should have a better sense of how the decisions relating to energy are being made and what trade-offs are being factored into those decisions.” “Energy impacts so many aspects of our daily lives, yet most of us never had an energy course in school,” says the course’s instructor, Associate Professor Kathy Araújo. This spring, Boise State University and Idaho National Laboratory are building this capacity locally, by collaborating with Boise State Associate Professor Kathy Araújo’s new interdisciplinary course on the complexities of energy-related decision-making. For these to succeed, communities and companies large and small – all across the United States – will need the guidance of critical thinkers knowledgeable about the complexities of energy and infrastructure interdependence. How do we protect our infrastructure, industrial economy, and communities from disruptors? As American culture and industry move toward increasingly higher standards for energy security and reliability, it is becoming clear that no one solution will solve this problem for all industries and communities. Energy resilience is the mantra of a new generation of policy and research.
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