Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

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This shows the Western North American power grid with the analysis results of 200 overlaid possible contingencies. Red areas indicate vulnerable portions of the power grid that network operators must address. Gray areas are causes for concern and green areas are safe. Overlaying the 200 sets of risk-level data allows operators to visualize the collective risk of contingencies on the system.

Getting a grip on the grid

June 10th, 2010 Updated: November 30th, 2011

A PNNL team enlists new algorithms and powerful computers to quickly analyze which combinations of failures most threaten the power grid.

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The big face off

December 17th, 2009 Updated: March 1st, 2010

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers say their algorithms can analyze millions of video frames, pluck out the faces and quantify them to create searchable databases for facial identification.

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