ECE Research Seminar – November 14, 12-1 p.m.
November 10, 2025
Please join us for our November 2025 ECE Research Seminar
November 14, 2025, Friday 12:00-1:00 PM, Simrall 104
https://msstate.webex.com/msstate/j.php?MTID=ma48bc51c663ffbc911cf1ce6735f25ce
Wildfire Risk Mitigation Methods to Enhance the Resilience of Power Systems
Fasiha Zainab | fz94@msstate.edu
Abstract: The resilience of power systems has become increasingly important in recent years and needs to be further enhanced in the future, as potential threats from severe natural disaster events, specifically wildfires. A major concern is the two-way interaction between power systems and wildfires: power systems can ignite wildfires and be disrupted by them. Power system-induced wildfires occur when electrical components, particularly transmission lines, ignite fires due to faults exacerbated by extreme weather conditions. The presence of uncertainties, especially those related to unpredictable weather conditions, makes it difficult to handle and can significantly increase the risk of wildfire. Furthermore, these ignitions not only threaten public safety and infrastructure but also disrupt grid operations and lead to substantial economic losses. Therefore, strengthening the resilience of power systems against wildfire risk has become a pressing need. To address these challenges, the proposed study introduces an uncertainty-aware chance-constrained resilience-enhancement framework that mitigates the risk of power system-induced wildfire through short-term operational strategies as a preventive measure. The short-term operational strategy develops a wildfire risk mitigation approach using an adjustable distributionally robust chance-constrained (ADRCC) model, which ensures flexible decision-making even when the probability distributions of wildfire conditions are ambiguous or unknown. The wildfire risk mitigation (WRM) is modeled as a chance constraint, and the risk tolerance associated with the WRM constraint is treated as a variable. This model enables proactive de-energization decisions to reduce the likelihood of wildfire ignitions, finding a balance between wildfire risk mitigation and load shedding. Therefore, this research introduces robust approaches to proactively mitigate power system–induced wildfire risks under uncertain weather conditions, thereby enhancing the overall resilience of power systems.
Fasiha Zainab is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Mississippi State University. Her research interests include power system optimization, power system operation and planning, resilience enhancement, and modeling. She is a part of the team YongOptimization, the top performer of the US Department of Energy (DOE) ARPA-E Grid Optimization (GO) Competition Challenge 3. She received the 2025 ECE Research Symposium Award. In addition to her research, she serves as an International Graduate Ambassador for ECE department at MSU.
* For further information, contact:
Dr. Jenny Du | du@ece.msstate.edu | 5-2035
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