Multimodal Power Outage Prediction for Rapid Disaster Response and Resource Allocation
Alejandro Aparcedo, Christian Lopez, Abhinav Kotta, Mengjie Li · 2024
Extreme weather events are increasingly common due to climate change, posing significant risks. To mitigate further damage, a shift towards renewable energy is imperative. Unfor-tunately, underrepresented communities that are most affected often receive infrastructure improvements last. We propose a novel visual spatiotemporal framework for predicting nighttime lights (NTL) and power outage severity and location before and after major hurricanes. Central to our solution is the Visual-Spatiotemporal Graph Neural Network (VST-GNN), optimizing spatiotemporal visual data utilization. Our work brings aware-ness to underrepresented areas in urgent need of enhanced energy infrastructure, such as future photovoltaic (PV) deployment. By identifying the severity and localization of power outages, our initiative aims to raise awareness and prompt action from policymakers and community stakeholders. Ultimately, this effort seeks to empower regions with vulnerable energy infrastructure, enhancing resilience and reliability for at-risk communities.