The New York Power Authority (NYPA), headquartered in White Plains, has announced a first-time arrangement to share climate data with communications giant AT&T.
The effort is designed to identify risks to utility and telecommunications infrastructure and, by so doing, put New York in a better position to deal with extreme weather.
“The utility and telecommunications industries are interdependent, especially in an emergency, and this collaboration will help us both be able to mitigate potential costly events related to our climate,” said Gil C. Quiniones, NYPA”™s president and CEO. “As part of this climate study, researchers will use hyper-localized climate data to help inform and plan smart infrastructure investments for optimal resiliency and reliability. This will help us be better positioned to be more prepared for climate-based events.”
About three weeks ago, NYPA revealed plans to study the long-term effects of climate change on power generation and transmission equipment and system operations in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy science and engineering research center; the Electric Power Research Institute; and Columbia University”™s Center on Global Energy Policy.
AT&T will share data with the Power Authority and also demonstrate the Climate Change Analysis Tool it has created.
“Since the launch of our Climate Change Analysis Tool, we have understood the importance of sharing our rich climate datasets with others to help assess vulnerability and build resilience,” said Shannon Carroll, director of global environmental sustainability at AT&T. “Collaborating with NYPA is one way to ensure communities across New York can better understand and prepare for the long-term impacts of climate change.”
According to NYPA, the energy and telecommunications sectors both have infrastructure that needs to withstand extreme weather events such as floods, heatwaves and hurricanes. NYPA maintains that both sectors need to effectively and expediently recover following an extreme weather event.
For more: allconnect.com/providers/att
