  Wildfires can severely damage electricity grids leading to long periods of
power interruption. Climate change will exacerbate this threat by increasing
the frequency of dry climate conditions. Under these climate conditions,
human-related actions that initiate wildfires should be avoided, including
those induced by power systems operation. In this paper, we propose a novel
optimization model that is capable of determining appropriate network topology
changes (via switching actions) to alleviate the levels of power flows through
vulnerable parts of the grid so as to decrease the probability of wildfire
ignition. Within this framework, the proposed model captures the relationship
between failure probabilities and line-flow decisions by explicitly considering
the former as a function of the latter. The resulting formulation is a
two-stage model with endogenous decision-dependent probabilities, where the
first stage determines the optimal switching actions and the second stage
evaluates the worst-case expected operation cost. We propose an exact iterative
method to deal with this intricate problem and the methodology is illustrated
with a 54-bus and a 138-bus distribution system.
