Modeling interdependencies of critical infrastructures

Beyond computer systems and their applications, we have undertook modeling interdependencies of critical infrastructures, namely the electricity and informational infrastructures. Interdependencies are being increased by recent evolutions in electricity infra­structure control and monitoring architectures and operations, due to the opening of these architectures to allow market deregulation and competition. We have produced a model of failures resulting from interdependencies, enabling a unified representation of the influence of accidental and malicious threats. The model is based on the assumption that cascading failures originating from malfunctions in a given infrastructure induce constraints on the other infrastructure (e.g., performance degradations or inappropriate human actions), leading to so-called escalating failures. A state-machine model describes in a compact form the behavior and interdependencies of the infrastructures (see Figure 1). The model is made explicit by a stochastic Petri net evidencing the phenomena leading to cascading and escalating failures. This is the first published unified model of infrastructure interdependencies [Laprie et al. 2007].




Figure 1: Compact state machine model of the electricity (e-) and information (i-) infrastructures

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Publications

[Laprie et al. 2007] J.-C. Laprie, K. Kanoun, M. Kaâniche, Modelling interdependencies between the electricity and information infrastructures, 26th Int. Conf. on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP 2007), Nuremberg (Germany), 18-21 Sept. 2007, pp. 54-67