A Coordinated Utility Emergency Response: Addressing Information-Sharing Barriers for Utilities and Emergency Response Organizations

Natural gas is an increasingly important energy source for the United States and is being used in more critical operations, such as power plants, military installations, and hospitals. These facilities and others are increasingly turning toward natural-gas-powered distributed generation (DG) and microgrids to provide reliable generation. DG provides back-up power for communications, water and waste water pumping, and other critical facilities, with a growing need for communications to drive sensor and control functions for other utility infrastructures. Damage to natural gas infrastructures can have cascading impacts throughout the energy supply chain.