Development of empirical vulnerability curves for electrical supply systems subjected to wind hazard

In this paper, we develop a series of empirical vulnerability curves for energy distribution infrastructure in the UK, specifically for overhead line components, when subjected to wind storm hazard. We have achieved this by combining an atmospheric model, driven by reanalysis data, with empirical fault data from 1991 to 2010. The fault data used in this study comes from a national database of electricity distribution faults. While the fault data in this database is comprehensive, it has the deficiency of not recording the exact location of the fault, instead it only indicates which District Network Operator owned the asset. Better fault location information is available, but this is only available from the Operator. We also investigate the sensitivity of vulnerability curves to three different resolutions of the fault information; namely by Operator, Region and Area in order to evaluate the impact that this has to the vulnerability curve. From the results shown in this paper, we can conclude that the spatial resolution of the hazard data can have a significant impact to the vulnerability curve, particularly for large wind storm hazards.Non UBCUnreviewedThis collection contains the proceedings of ICASP12, the 12th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering held in Vancouver, Canada on July 12-15, 2015. Abstracts were peer-reviewed and authors of accepted abstracts were invited to submit full papers. Also full papers were peer reviewed. The editor for this collection is Professor Terje Haukaas, Department of Civil Engineering, UBC Vancouver.Facult