Pre-Flooding Island Formation in Distribution Systems Resolving Local Critical Infrastructures Interdependency

Floodwater can severely damage electricity distribution system (DS) components and interrupt the service to all the customers, even the critical ones. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate the possible impacts of a flooding event on DS operation. This paper proposes a new framework that constructs islands prior to flood occurrence, for continuation of electricity supply to the critical loads realizing different important infrastructures interdependency. The interdependencies between different local critical infrastructures are modeled in this framework. In addition, distributed generators (DGs) as well as the underground cables are considered as vulnerable components to flooding. The proposed framework divides a DS into several islands before flood formation. It is implemented on the 33-bus distribution test system, and its effectiveness in improvement of electricity supply continuation to the critical loads is verified through some case studies.