Hurst, W and Mac Dermott, A (2015) Evaluating the Effects of Cascading Failures in a Network of Critical Infrastructures. International Journal of System of Systems Engineering, 6 (3). pp. 221-236. ISSN 1748-068X

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Abstract

Networks of interconnected critical infrastructures are the supporting mechanisms and pillars of every industrialised nation. Heavily interconnected and mutually reliant on each other, their service provisions often cross boarders and multiple countries can consider the same infrastructure as critical. However, this reliance is also a great weakness. The level of dependence each infrastructure has on another means that an individual failure has the potential to cascade and impact vital service provision. Failures result in devastating impact on the economy, communication, e-government systems, national defence and society as a whole. Predicting the effects of a cascading failure is a challenge. In this paper, an approach for identifying the effects of cascading failures in multiple critical infrastructures is portrayed. A simulation depicting a virtual city is presented in order to visualise the spread of a fault in one infrastructure. In particular, the simulation is used to assess the resulting effect of a telecommunications failure on the service provisions of other critical infrastructures. Data classification techniques are used to assess infrastructure behaviour changes and demonstrate an approach for organisations to plan for cascading effects. The results demonstrate how subtle changes in infrastructure behaviour have the potential to spread with both significant and minor impacts. These subtle changes can be detected and planned for using our behaviour analysis techniques.
Index Terms— Critical Infrastructure, Cascading Failure, Simulation, Data
Classification

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Embargo requested: Not known
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Divisions:	Computer Science & Mathematics
Publisher:	Inderscience
Date Deposited:	17 Apr 2015 13:56
Last Modified:	14 Mar 2022 15:26
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/894

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