By Mike Karlskind

Severe Weather Alert! This winter’s El Niño and forecasts for a 2016 La Niña are likely to set new marks in size and scope for severe weather, with anticipated bumps in precipitation, landslides and hurricanes more powerful than average.

This might be good news for meteorologists and weather watchers. But for utilities, the prospect of a full slate of weather events requires similar advances in technology to prevent outage and respond when problems arise. Customers and regulators demand better industry response, increasingly significant weather events notwithstanding. While utility managers deal with these issues on a regular basis and are adapting to the changing climate, the industry is still reporting a 5-10% increase in outage time.

How can utilities lay the groundwork “before the storm” to improve operations, improve communication and reduce outage times?

In short, data analytics and mobile workforce-management optimization can make the largest assist in bringing about more agile preparations and responses. Analyzing historical data is a key component to maximizing preparedness.

Utilities have access to a wealth of publicly available storm data from past events at their fingertips. By examining past events, utilities can model and anticipate the assets and technician skill sets that will be needed in the field. Conducting predictive analysis and updating storm-restoration-process policies can help a utility better position itself to have the required resources and infrastructure in place when a storm hits.

Mobility key to improved response

Mobile technology, coupled with geo-sensitive analytics—the automated assessment of outage geography gained by analyzing meter data—will play a major role in delivering storm operation improvements in the coming years. Thanks to sensor-based devices in the field, mobility enables technicians to more easily communicate with each other; dispatchers to quickly assign jobs based on location and status; executives out in the field during emergencies to receive up-to-the-minute dashboards to brief stakeholders; and information to be culled together to update customers in real time.

Utility executives must adapt to the new mobile landscape. Mobile phones, tablets and now even wearable technology all provide new ways to optimize storm response. But mobile technology alone can only do so much to improve the response. Storms and other emergency scenarios require executives to make quick decisions that are aligned with company policy. Automation and connectivity alone is not enough. Information, received just in time, is the keystone.

Often, when tapping outside mutual-aid crews to address a weather incident or disaster response, scheduling still happens via paper and phone calls. This creates unnecessary lag time in getting the right resources to the right places. Open mobile systems established in advance can enable the immediate addition of third-party resource scheduling and significantly reduce lag time. Investing in mobile hardware that sits on a shelf for most of the year is no longer prerequisite to mutual aid. Bring your own device doesn’t just apply to a company’s employees anymore but can be extended to partner utilities during a storm.