  The frequency of disruptive and newly emerging threats (e.g. man-made
attacks--cyber and physical attacks; extreme natural events--hurricanes,
earthquakes, and floods) has escalated dramatically in the last decade. Impacts
of these events are very severe ranging from long power outage duration, major
power system equipment (e.g. power generation plants, transmission and
distribution lines, and substation) destruction, and complete blackout.
Accurate modeling of these events is vitally important as they serve as
mathematical tools for the assessment and evaluation of various operations and
planning investment strategies to harden power systems against these events.
This paper provides a comprehensive and critical review of current practices in
the modeling of extreme events, system components, and system response for
resilience evaluation and enhancement, which is a very important stepping stone
toward the development of complete, accurate, and computationally attractive
modeling techniques. The paper starts with reviewing existing technologies to
model the propagation of extreme events and then discusses the approaches used
to model impacts of these events on power system components and system
response. This paper also discusses the research gaps and associated
challenges, and potential solutions to the limitations of the existing modeling
approaches.
