A storm knocks out electric power? There’s an app for that, and soon there may be a spy drone, too.

Facing more frequent storms that cripple electric distribution systems over big areas, utility companies are drafting iPads and military-style aerial surveillance robots to get the lights back on faster.

Much of their problem in restoring service quickly usually has to do with information and logistics. In the latest wave of power failures, on Thursday night and Friday morning, a line of extreme storms knocked out electricity to thousands in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. In some places, damage was so extensive, and so many roads were blocked, that utilities had not even finished assessing the problem by midday Friday.

After the powerful storm known as a derecho struck on June 29, East Coast utilities were forced to bring in help from as far away as Ontario and Oklahoma, and had to determine quickly where to put the borrowed crews to work, even before the roads were passable. Then they had to deliver poles, transformers, wires, crossbars and other parts to the precise locations where they were needed.

A prototype app for the iPad, developed by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility research consortium, is aimed at solving part of that problem. Here is how it works: The electric company preloads the iPad with data about the equipment in the field. With GPS, the device knows its location. A field worker can then point the device at a utility pole and quickly see an “augmented reality” view, showing precisely what kind of pole, crossbar, transformer and wire are present, and how the system is wired.