Every year wildfires destroy thousands of homes, cause massive damage to utility infrastructure and lead to billions of dollars in damages around the world. According to the National Interagency Coordination Center Wildland Fire Summary and Statistics Annual Report, in 2024 alone, there were 64,897 wildfires reported in the United States causing an estimated $4.8 billion in direct suppression costs across the United States, with broader economic losses reaching $89.6 billion in lost output. The impacton communities around the world continues to increase, and providing a safe and reliable grid is only becoming more challenging. Mitigating threats from wildfires is becoming a matter of both public safety and business continuity for electric utilities.

Wildfires sparked by utility infrastructure have become a growing concern, prompting electric utilities to adopt more proactive, data-driven mitigation strategies. These efforts include enhanced vegetation management, undergrounding of distribution lines, implementation of early fire detection technologies and the use of Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) protocols.

A crucial enabler of these measures is the utility’s operational technology (OT) platform, which consolidates grid data to provide operators with the real-time situational awareness needed to make informed, high-stakes decisions under pressure. Recognizing this, Aspen Technology Digital Grid Management (DGM) has introduced the AspenTech OSI Fire Zone Management (FZM) application, designed to help utilities monitor, assess and respond to wildfire threats more effectively.

The AspenTech OSI monarch OT platform supports aggregating data from various sources to provide a single-pane-of-glass solution to view and interpret current wildfire data. This brings information such as fire risk indices, real-time fire locations and weather information and sensor data into the context of the as-operated network, giving utilities the essential system they need to monitor evolving threats across the grid.  Building on the foundation of real-time situational awareness, AspenTech OSI FZM equips operators with streamlined tools to take swift, informed action when regions face heightened wildfire risk. By turning insights into field-ready decisions, it enhances response times and helps mitigate potential threats before they escalate.

AspenTech OSI FZM enables utilities to define geographic zones across their service territory and seamlessly integrate fire risk data for each zone from trusted sources. This capability ensures localized risk assessment and targeted response planning based on up-to-date, reliable inputs. When a zone enters an elevated risk state, the application notifies the operator and analyzes the current as-operated state of the network to determine what devices feed equipment in the high-risk zone.  Once identified, those devices are placed in a queue for operator review, enabling the timely execution of protection scheme changes designed to protect high-risk zones, such as disabling multiple reclosing attempts when faults occur within the designated area.

As real-time operations continue, AspenTech OSI FZM warns operators when switching will impact a high-risk zone and recommends additional protection controls in response to changing conditions.

Since all of this is contextualized within the centralized control system, the application tracks the number of customers impacted by operations based on the current as-switched state of the network. This streamlines transparent communications with your customers. There is also full auditing and reporting available to track every action taken in response to wildfires. This reporting supports post-event analysis and ensures access to all data needed for regulatory reporting.

Utilities have a vital responsibility to reduce wildfire risk, and Aspen Technology’s DGM team stands ready to support that mission. Effective wildfire mitigation is essential not only for maintaining grid reliability and resilience, but also for safeguarding the communities and environments utilities serve. With this new fire zone management application, utilities are empowered to proactively manage fire threats thereby enhancing safety, protecting infrastructure and strengthening the long-term sustainability of critical electric systems.