  One of the serious threats related to climate change is an increase in the
number and severity of extreme weather events. A prominent example are
hurricanes, which result from rising coastal temperatures. Such extreme weather
events can cause extensive damages in infrastructure systems and, potentially,
destroy components in electricity transmission networks, which in turn can lead
to major blackouts. In our recent work, we study the risk of hurricane-induced
cascading failures in power systems of the U.S. East Coast using historical
wind field data sets. For this purpose, we model the destruction of overhead
transmission lines during hurricanes, where each failing line causes a
rerouting of power flow in the system. New power flows can overload additional
lines, which are then automatically deactivated and thereby cause another
rerouting of power flow and so on. Ultimately, a cascade of failures can unfold
that can black out large parts of the power system.
