Blacked Out By the Data

  Business Intelligence   Strategy  

At about 4:15 p.m. EST on August 14, 2003, I left a meeting, anxious to head back to my desk to finish up a few outstanding items before heading home for the day. What I encountered outside was something I have not seen in my lifetime: miles of cars, one after another, trying to navigate streets without functioning traffic lights. It was a blackout.

It must be a short-lived one, I thought to myself, as I had experienced long blackouts, only in less developed countries. I looked down at my gas tank and noticed that I was running low on gas. I thought I'd hit the gas station at the next intersection and fill up. When I arrived at the gas station, no pumps were operating--they all used electricity.

I tuned in closer to the radio--a major grid failure had occurred and it may be hours before power was restored. I thought I'd wait it out at the gas station. My cell phone battery began to run low. A sense of dread began to creep over me: What if this lasted longer than I thought? This was the great blackout of 2003. I survived and we all survived, but in the aftermath of the blackout, people began looking for answers in the data. What was the root cause of this major catastrophe, and why was it not averted? Only digging through the data would reveal the answers...

The utilities industry is perhaps the least sophisticated when it comes to …

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