Articles

&Z^ƵďƐĐƌŝƉƟŽŶ͗ ✌ ✌ ✌ ✍ ✎ ✏ ✎ ✑ ✒ ✓ ✔ ✑ ✔ ✒ ✕ ✖ ✒ ✗ ✘ ✙ ✕ ✍ ✑ ✗ ✚ ✁ ✂ ✄ ☎ ✆ ✝ ✞ ✟ ✠ ✡ ✟ ✝ ☛ ✠ ✝ ☞ 53 they perform consistently—especially during major outages. A cloud network o!ers virtually unlimited scaling, reliability and redundancy for hosting an outage mapping solution. When web maps are managed in the cloud, the technology infrastructure behind that system is managed for the utility across tens—or hundreds—of servers. As usage of web maps increases, additional infrastructure is applied seamlessly. Single points of failure are eliminated by automatically sharing processing tasks among a cluster of systems, ensuring a consistent end-user experience, which aligns with the public's expectations. A large utility in Atlantic Canada realized these advantages when it implemented a cloud GIS-based outage map in the fall of 2014. When the year's biggest and most violent winter storm hit in November, the storm dropped over 35 centimetres of snow across a very large geographic area and caused extensive damage that left more than 50,000 customers in the region without power. During the three-hour peak of the storm, visits to the outage map on the utility's public website rocketed to an average of 23 inquiries per second. In the end, the outage map e!ectively handled 1.2 million inquiries over the 24 hours immediately following the storm's arrival. The cloud-based infrastructure that was hosting the solution provided additional processing capacity to accommodate the increased tra#c without placing any strain on the utility's servers; the public outage map operated independently of its in-house information technology (IT) infrastructure. Consequently, the outage map maintained 100 percent uptime, performed consistently and delivered a positive end-user experience throughout the storm. The utility also avoided the costs of purchasing and installing additional servers to achieve the scalability that the cloud GIS environment provided to manage the sudden surge in map visits during the storm. In addition, communicating outage information through the easy-to-interpret web map resulted in fewer calls to the utility's call center and helped the public gain a clearer understanding of the scope of the power outage. This level of seamless, simpli"ed positive interaction between the public and the utility's complex outage management systems and processes has not always been easy to achieve. Some utilities have implemented outage mapping processes prior to the establishment of industry best practices and have lived through various challenges as a result. One of the most detrimental obstacles some utilities have faced has come from improperly safeguarding their outage Extreme weather events that happen once every 40 years now occur as frequently as every six years in some regions Source: Insurance Bureau of Canada 'JHVSF%VSJOHTFWFSFTUPSNTVUJMJUJFTDBOVTFBEZOBNJDXFCNBQUPFóDJFOUMZDPNNVOJDBUF PVUBHFSFQPSUTUPUIFQVCMJD)PTUJOHUIFNBQJOUIFDMPVEFOTVSFTUIBUJUDBOTVQQPSUTVEEFO TVSHFTBOETQJLFTJODVTUPNFSJORVJSJFT NEW BRUNSWICK (SBOEF%JHVF Customers A!ected: 1,930 Number of Outages: 3 PRINCE EDWARD NOVA SCOTIA Northumberland Strait

• Cover