A Preamble to Critical Infrastructure Modeling

This short paper introduces the modeling of critical infrastructures (C.I.) by idealizing a basic architecture consisting of just two nodes and two edges with the intent to illustrate some of the basic features and understand what happens in the event of a disruption and how this might propagate with consequent cascading effects. The paper starts by first introducing the concept of sectoral infrastructures making reference to the recent EU directive 2008-114-EC which is the basis for the identification of European critical infrastructures. This directive includes the coverage of critical infrastructure from an ex-ante viewpoint and requires that EU member states assess the casualties, and economic and public effects of critical infrastructure disruption involving cascading and trans-border scenarios. In the second part two arbitrary but dependent infrastructures are then considered (power station and water works) which form the basis of a kernel network that is then subsequently analyzed under 4 different cases of disruption (without recovery). Three other modeling techniques are then briefly discussed, namely, Petri nets, the Inputoutput model and agent based modeling. The paper closes with possible developments of the network and what tools may be exploited to model more complex situations and successfully tackle the resulting challenges.

WARD David; 

2011-01-05

ASERS Publishing

JRC56404

2068-7532,   

http://www.asers.eu/journals/jarm/jarlm-issues.html,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC56404,