Power Outage/ or Blackout

Primary reference(s)

EIS Council, 2019. Black Sky Hazards. Electric Infrastructure Security (EIS) Council. Accessed 9 October 2020.

FEMA, 2018. Be prepared for a power outage. US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Accessed 9 October 2020.

Pescaroli, G., S. Turner, T. Gould, D.E. Alexander and R.T. Wicks, 2017. Cascading Effects and Escalations in Wide Area Power Failures: A Summary for Emergency Planners. Accessed 9 October 2020.

UK Cabinet Office, 2017. National risk register of civil emergencies 2017 edition. UK Cabinet Office, London. Accessed 9 October 2020.

Annotations

Key relevant UN convention / multilateral treaty

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 includes disaster risk reduction objectives related to critical infrastructures (UNISDR, 2015). Disaster reduction policies on power outages stand at the crossway of commercial and market-regulatory treaties, development strategies, and national/cross national security agreements in the field of critical infra- structure protection.

At the EU level, relevant policy documents include:

• Council Directive 2008/114/EC (European Parliament Think Tank, 2021);
• Directive 2009/72/EC (European Commission, 2009);
• Directive (EU) 2019/944 (European Commission, 2019)
• Directive (EU) 2022/2557 on the resilience of critical entities [Directive (EU) 2022/2557 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on the resilience of critical entities] (European Commission, 2022)

Multi-country agreements in place include, for instance, the 2015 International Energy Charter (Energy Charter, 2015).

Drivers

Power outages are associated with cascading and systemic risks rooted at the intersection between physical, societal, functional and organisational dynamics (Pescaroli and Alexander, 2016). Triggering events include failure of operation, failure of equipment or material damage, human errors, ageing infrastructure, and damage caused by natural hazards on equipment, facilities and lines (Amin, 2002; Little, 2002; Petermann et al., 2011; Karagiannis et al., 2017). Directly and indirectly targeted malicious acts include cyberattacks, terrorist acts, or electromagnetic pulse attacks (Amin, 2002; Linkov et al., 2013).

Impacts

The impact of power outages can have cascading effects on healthcare systems, communication networks, and water supply systems. These can be amplified if the outage happens in concurrency with climate-related extreme events (e.g., cold waves, heat waves) (Klinger et al., 2014). Since the early 2000s, larger impacts of power outages have been associated with growing and varying demand, network size and complexity, as well as market deregulation (Helbing et al., 2006). Electric power is indispensable in modern society, influencing work, healthcare, leisure, economy, and livelihood. Critical social services such as emergency response, law enforcement, transportation, and communication systems heavily rely on uninterrupted electricity. Extended power outages can greatly impair their functionality, posing risks to public safety and hindering emergency response efforts (Rouhana et al., 2025). 

Petermann et al. (2011) illustrated that power outages can heavily disrupt societal and economic functions both directly (due to the lack of energy they rely on) and indirectly (e.g., through interdependencies). According to Pescaroli et al. (2017), the effects of power outages are associated with direct threats to life (e.g., impacts on the health sector, water shortages, or disruption of heating and cooling); indirect threats to life (e.g., increased need of the vulnerable population, loss of cash flow); and challenges for operational capacities (e.g., loss of efficiency of emergency services). 

During power outages, people may turn to alternative energy sources during blackouts - e.g. stoves and burners used inside, which may cause carbon monoxide poisoning (CH0302).

Multi-hazard context

The figure below summarises common interactions between power outages or blackouts and other hazards. This information should be used with caution and not be solely relied upon in Disaster Risk Management, particularly as some interactions may not have been included. Note that hazardous events occurring together or locally in space or time may not necessarily cause, amplify, or be otherwise related to each other. Specific examples of multi-hazard context can be found in the ‘Hazard drivers’ and ‘Impacts’ sections above.

Multi-hazard diagram

Risk Management

Risk management strategies include national and international risk assessments, development of policies and practices for continuity management, training and exercises for complex scenarios involving multiple interdependent failures, assessment of new technologies (e.g., microgrids, cashless transactions), and the improvement of crisis communication before, during and after power outage events (FEMA, 2018).  

Khediri et al. proposed a novel Early Warning System for predicting blackouts in smart grids. This system is based on deep learning models, specifically Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Deep Self-Organizing Maps (DSOM), designed to analyse data from various sources, including power demand, generation, transmission, distribution, and weather forecasts. The system's performance was evaluated using a dataset composed of time windows and labels indicating whether a blackout occurred within the respective time frame. It achieved an accuracy of 98.71% and a precision of 98.65% in predicting blackouts. These results suggest that the Early Warning System is a promising tool for enhancing the resilience and reliability of power grids while mitigating the impacts of blackouts on communities and businesses (Khediri et al., 2024). 

Monitoring

Not available