Utility Outage Information

Data about power company service areas and their announcements about outages are critical for the effective coordination of resources after disasters, and also for building community and neighborhood resilience. As part of the 2015 White House Mapathon, the Department of Energy's [Office of Electricity] (https://www.energy.gov/oe/office-electricity) created a national geospatial database of power company service areas with pointers to public outage information (eg, through Twitter, web sites, and toll-free telephone numbers).

Mapathon participants researched public outage information state by state, and populated a lookup table so that disaster-impacted residents, tourists, first responders and relief volunteers can easily get to the information they need on scope and estimated restore times for power outages. This project benefited from participation of private and public sector folks who need this data for their work, and of third party app developers such as Red Cross and The Weather Channel who will incorporate this data into the information services they offer their users.