A far more efficient method of tracking the power status in campus buildings has been developed by Tech Solutions’ Networking team. This team has developed a dashboard to better assist the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), along with the University Police Department and Facilities Management, allowing them to quickly understand the scope of a power outage, in order to be able to communicate information with the campus community. This dashboard was utilized recently to understand the size of the September 18 power outage.
Michael Adams, network automation engineer for Tech Solutions, largely developed the dashboard, utilizing the campus automation and configuration management service, Ansible, to write a script to gather data and create the simple display. The display shows squares and abbreviations for the various buildings on campus and highlights them in red or green depending on their power status. By using a service the university already has access to, Adams was able to introduce an innovative solution without incurring additional costs.
Director of Emergency Management Eric Hodges said, “A few days after we gained access to the dashboard, we experienced a multi-building power outage on campus. We used the dashboard in the Emergency Operations Center, which helped to quickly inform us so we could then populate and publish a map for the campus community. This has the potential to be a very helpful tool, and I’m very appreciative [that Tech Solutions] shared this dashboard with us.”
Now using this dashboard, the emergency response areas on campus will be able to save resources during a power outage, as they previously relied on sending Facilities staff to buildings across campus or tracking call-ins about buildings’ statuses. This allows staff to focus instead on restoring power to the affected areas.
Changes are expected to be made for future uses, as some buildings’ network switches are connected to the building generators, so do not detect outages of their main power and do not display an outage on the dashboard. The team hopes to find a way around this condition and continue seeing the benefits of this dashboard for the campus community.
