Systems and methods for making real-time predictions about an arc flash event on an electrical system are disclosed. An analytics server is communicatively connected to a data acquisition component. The analytics server comprises a virtual system modeling engine configured to create a virtual system model reflecting current network topology of the electrical system; an analytics engine configured to monitor predicted output data from the virtual system model and real-time output data from the electrical system acquired by the data acquisition component and update the virtual system model when a difference between the real-time output data and the predicted output data exceeds a threshold; and an arc flash simulation engine configured to forecast at least one aspect of and arc flash event based on the virtual system model.