Integrated Safety, Security, and Emergency Management Software: A purchaser’s guide for utilities

Disruption in the utilities industry forcing a software rethink

The utilities sector is being buffeted by profound change, with disruption coming from numerous directions, including a steep reduction in native supply, accelerating rates of new source connections, and the mainstreaming of downstream renewables. 

While these disruptive forces might be affecting individual actors (incumbents and newcomers) differently, the entire industry is contending with unprecedented rates of customer engagement. According to the research, service expectations are being cultivated in more traditionally customer-centric industries, then exported into the utilities sector, where customers are now clamoring for choice and control, “exceptional, reliable, and resilient service”ⁱ.

Utilities must, of course, meet these new customer expectations in order to ensure a positive service experience. Yet, serving hyper-engaged customers with disparate needs throughout the complex customer journey (up to and including service outages) is difficult. Nor does the aging of infrastructure and other, major (often vulnerable) physical assets make the task of meeting demands for high-quality service while lowering the risk of disruptions and safety incidents any easierⁱⁱ.

That’s why for most utilities, effective risk and incident management has become the sole means of efficiently managing safety, security, business disruption and continuity, from the smallest incident or service outage to a major crisis. How, then, to ensure reliability, quality, maintenance, even legal compliance with mandatory reporting requirements? Advanced, integrated safety and security management software, custom-built for utilities, can help. And here’s what to look for on the
technology market.

Proactive hazard reduction management 

More and more, utility assets are causing fire events; at least, that’s what courts are finding. Informal sources put the number of wildfire ignitions from infrastructural systems at anywhere from one to eleven percentⁱⁱⁱ. The Royal Commission tasked with investigating the deadly 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Australia found that electricity assets account for one to four percent of all bushfire ignitions, equivalent to some 200 fires per year^iv.

Those fires can be devastating for communities and costly to utilities. Between 1984 and 2013, economic costs from wildfire events averaged around USD 172 million per event, with insurable losses running less than half of total losses^v. 

What can be done? Enhanced hazard reduction management efforts, for starters, are integral to keeping costs down for utilities. Specific methodologies include risk assessments to catalogue trees that could come into contact with (at-risk) lines. Those assessments will then inform the frequency and intensity of tress assessment patrols, which, in turn, get fed into a utility’s integrated risk and incident management platform. 

What specific capabilities should that technology support on the hazard reduction management front? Look for the following features:

• Risk assessments and risk analysis to facilitate risk-based emergency management
• Pinpoints where hazards are
• Manages the entire risk assessment process, including implementation and review of controls
• Conforms with risk management standards like ISO 31000 

What’s more, extreme weather events (like high heat or wind) will often exacerbate a utility’s wildfire risk^vi. Therefore, proactive hazard reduction management should also entail procuring software that pulls in information and intelligence from weather services, spatial data feeds, social media, and other sources. Advanced weather reporting capabilities should include:

• Comprehensive weather alerts dashboards
• Quick views of weather feeds and notification alerts
• Integrated RSS feeds to ensure up-to-date information is presented 

Improve situational awareness 

Integrating weather services is one way to build real-time situational awareness of an incident. But there are others, including geo-spatial tracking that lets teams map the locations of networks, assets, and staff. Advanced technology also provides users with a common operating platform through flexible dashboards for assets, registers, dispatchers, executives, workers, incident collaborators and managers. 

In addition, complaints from the field yield valuable intelligence that can bolster situational awareness and mitigate hazards. As such, integrated complaints management should be part of the mix when procuring advanced safety and security management software for utilities. Specific functionality to look for includes:

• Capture and track all network-related complaints
• Record the category of complaint and customer acknowledgement status
• Capture incidents related to network operations from any channel, e.g. verbal, social media, email, letter, website, etc. 

Reach vulnerable customers and assets 

An effective asset management system provides utilities with a common frame of reference (i.e. documentation of key processes and procedures) and language to work on infrastructural problems that often occur across diverse supply chains. It’s across these oft-vulnerable, asset supply chains that silos are most likely to develop, exacerbating the safety risk profile of the utility in question.

And so, nowadays, delivering high-quality services to engaged customers, while maintaining robust safety standards and meeting compliance requirements, means integrating digital asset management systems into the heart of safety and security management. That entails advanced software that can identify vulnerable customers for prioritization and support services to mitigate the impact of service disruption. It also entails safety and security management software that can seamlessly integrate with customer information management systems for customer address information.

When it comes to service disruption, software should also be able to map affected addresses and monitor (vulnerable) properties, after first recording multiple access attempts. Reaching those vulnerable assets and customers also requires a mobile app for engineers to update activity status, report incident case notes, and upload field data, images, and video.

Effective service outage management 

It’s no secret that key aspects of outage and incident response remain relics of a by-gone era. Often, when major incidents take place, mobile command units, if available, are called to the scene. Once there, though, they find themselves unable to reliably access information from and about customers, including data about the actual address of the incident in question, homes turned on and off, number and location of vulnerable customers, and accessibility to properties. 

Field engineers are often being hamstrung by manual processes, as well, like having to fill out physical addresses on paper. These processes cause unintentional delays and make reporting, which is often mandatory, less accurate. They also slow down the re-charge process, because a utility can’t get reimbursed by a third party (who might have caused the incident in the first place) without proving that they’ve done the work. For context: task reporting can sometimes take upwards of a month, per major incident, slowing the recharge process down to a crawl. 

Reliable, accessible, and scalable technology should enable teams to monitor outages at the customer level and synthesize data from numerous sources. What’s required to make it happen: utility service disruption incident management, escalation, and incident reporting, for starters. Technology should also enable the dispatch of response resources to restore supply. 

Customer communications are important, too. So, software should give utilities the ability to notify customers of service outages and update them on service restoration. 

And to expedite recharge and cost recovery, advanced software should capture event timecards with the engineer’s name, property, time began, time ended, and duration spent.

Finally, integrated safety and security management technology should also make managing business-as-usual incidents, like infrastructure failures, simple. After all, the BAU events of today are the emergencies of tomorrow. A comprehensive solution should therefore enable the escalation of BAU outages to crisis and emergency response when necessary, as well as automate plans, processes, procedures, and responses via fully configurable workflows.

Like few other sectors, the utilities industry is changing fast. Hyper-engaged customers demand high-quality service; regulators demand reporting compliance; and the top brass demands a positive ROI on vulnerable assets. 

Hitherto, manual processes and siloed systems have made it difficult for utilities to keep up. But not anymore. An integrated safety and security platform, custom-built for utilities, can keep your organization secure and operating smoothly, giving you the information and tools necessary to effectively manage, safety, security, business disruption and continuity events of any shape or size. 

Citations

i Kenneth W. Costello, The Energy Bar Association: The Challenges of New Electricity Customer Engagement for Utilities and State Regulators. Available at https://www.eba-net.org/assets/1/6/16-49-80-Costello_-_[FINAL].pdf.

ii Jewel Saha, Nasdaq: Water Utility Industry Outlook Muddy With Aging Assets. Available at https://www.nasdaq.com/article/water-utility-industryoutlook-muddy-with-aging-assets-cm1173715.

iii Sig Guggenmoos, T&D World: Utility Wildfire Risk Management. Available at https://www.tdworld.com/vegetation-management/utility-wildfire-riskmanagement.

iv 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission: Final Report Summary. Available at http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/finaldocuments/summary/PF/VBRC_Summary_PF.pdf

v Lloyd’s: Wildfire: A burning issues for insurers? Available at https://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging-risk-reports/wildfire-final.pdf.

vi PG&E: Community Wildfire Safety. Available at https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/communitywildfire-safety.page.