Studies of major blackouts reveal that power system protection devices have contributed to a majority of system disturbances. This leads to efforts of improving protection Philosophy;;Analysis shows that conventional protection relies on coordination among stand-alone relays to obtain a dependability-biased component-protection scheme. Whereas it is more desirable and also feasible nowadays for an integrated approach to both component and system protection, provided modern relays possessing the ability of sharing information and applying intelligence in decision-making.;This dissertation proposes the adaptive protection concept for wide area systems. The scope of the research includes identifying and developing the desired architecture, intelligent algorithms and communication needs that facilitate the protection system to avoid and reduce the impact of system emergencies.;The purpose of this research work is to conceptualize and nurture adaptive protection concept for wide area systems, and to conduct feasibility studies to make this concept practically viable. Several case studies are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive protection scheme. In addition, voltage stability, which is a classic wide area problem, can be alleviated with the proposed concept. Steady state and transient simulation studies provided encouraging results. The detailed decision-making algorithms are simulated in several examples for validation of the concept.