A research team within the Defining, Measuring, & Optimizing Grid Resilience marquee products earned the Best Paper Award at the2025 Resilience Week Conference, an event focused on advancing resilient infrastructures and systems.
The winning paper, titled “Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Weather-related Compound Threats to Power Systems Using Markov Random Fields“, was authored by Nicole D. Jackson, Arjun Sharma, and J. Kyle Skolfield, a principle investigator within the Resilient Energy Systems Mission Campaign at Sandia national Laboratories. This work represents a major milestone in the project, Multi-hazard, Multi-objective, Multi-investment Optimal Transmission Infrastructure Expansion Planning for Natural Disaster Resilience, within the mission campaign.
About the Research
The paper highlights progress made during the first nine months of the project, focusing on compound hazard modeling, a critical step toward understanding and mitigating multiple, simultaneous threats to power systems. By leveraging Markov Random Fields, the team developed a spatio-temporal framework to model weather-related compound events, enabling more accurate risk assessment and resilience planning for the grid.
About Resilience Week
Large-scale disasters can ripple across regions through interconnected infrastructure systems with connections often invisible until it’s too late. Resilience Week, in partnership with TechConnect and the Defense TechConnect series, brings together public and private partners to address these challenges and ensure a secure, resilient energy flow nationwide. The 2025 event was held November 19–21 in National Harbor, MD, focusing on energy and technology solutions for infrastructure resilience.
Nicole Jackson delivered the award-winning presentation and accepted the certificate on behalf of the team.
Why It Matters
As natural disasters grow in frequency and severity, ensuring grid resilience is more critical than ever. This research lays the foundation for multi-hazard-aware infrastructure planning, helping utilities and policymakers make informed investment decisions to safeguard energy systems against compound threats.