Infrastructure protectionSpace Time Insight releases upgrade to Crisis Composite for extreme weather
The new Crisis Composite software for electric utilities correlates the effects of ice storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, and man made events; the solution allows operators of critical infrastructure facilities access to rich geospatial analytics that enable fast, informed action
In response to growing concern over the impact of extreme climatic and other environmental events on critical infrastructure, Fremont, California-based Space-Time Insight announced the release of an upgrade to its Space-Time Crisis Composite.
“The Space-Time Crisis Composite correlates real-time streaming data with enterprise data and weather and environmental feeds to provide operators of critical infrastructure with rich geospatial analytics that enable fast, informed action directly from a satellite view of operating assets and surrounding urban and suburban terrain,’’ states Mark L. Feldman, Ph.D., CEO of Space-Time Insight.
The company says that hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, ice, floods, and other environmental events are undermining aging infrastructure everywhere, damaging the ability of public utilities to deliver safe, quality service to their communities. There is a debate about the scope and sources of climate change – and even about whether or not such change is underway – but scientists agree that we should expect increases in hurricane damage, and damage cause by other natural phenomena (see “New Type of El Niño May Mean More Hurricanes Make Landfall,” 6 July 2009 HSNW; “Tornado Threat Increases as Gulf Hurricanes Get Larger,” 20 October 2009 HSNW).
‘’No matter what your position on the climate and its impact,’’ says Feldman, all critical infrastructure companies must be prepared. The first release of the Space-Time Crisis Composite focused on wildfires and related weather events. It helped electric utilities in California visually balance transmission and manage distribution through devastating summer fires. “This release of the composite adds geospatial analytics that correlate the effects of hurricanes, earthquakes, lightning, ice storms, and man-made events on grid assets and supports on-screen action scripts that guide operators in taking fast action before, during and after the event,” Feldman said.
Space-Time Insight has been selected as a finalist for the Platts Global Energy Commercial Technology of the Year award for 2009.
Space-Time Insight was founded in 2004 as Enterprise Horizons, a business intelligence consultancy. The software developed during that period was integrated into a stable, off-the-shelf, real-time, geospatial platform and a set of composite application solutions released in February 2009 for sale to electric utilities. Among Space-Time Insight’s customers are San Diego Gas & Electric, California ISO, Entergy, and Florida Power & Light.
