Behaviour Analysis of Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Components upon Failure

Burla, Pradeep and Lindner, Christine and Vallée, Dirk (2016) Behaviour Analysis of Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Components upon Failure. REAL CORP 2016 – SMART ME UP! How to become and how to stay a Smart City, and does this improve quality of life? Proceedings of 21st International Conference on Urban Planning, Regional Development and Information Society. pp. 107-116.

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Abstract

Urban life increasingly depends on intact critical infrastructures (CIs). For this reason, protecting critical infrastructure systems from natural disasters and man-made hazards has become an important topic in urban development research in recent years as a prerequisite for building and optimizing smart cities. To increase efficiency, the connections between CIs have been strengthened increasingly, resulting in highly interdependent large-scale infrastructure systems that are vulnerable to cascading failures. Hence, studying the cascading and feedback effects caused by the failure of a CI component in a given system can help strengthen this system. Understanding the response of the system in the event of a disaster can lead to better disaster management and better planning of critical infrastructures in the future. The population heavily depends on water, electricity, and the transportation network. These three components also depend on each other to function individually. This complex nature of interdependencies must be studied in order to understand the effects induced in one system due to the failure of another. The three systems (water, transport, and electricity) and their interdependencies can be modeled using graph theory. Water, transport, and electricity networks can be further broken down into smaller components. For example, the water network comprises water treatment plants, water storage tanks, pumping stations, sewage treatment, etc. interdependency factors into the model when, for instance, a pumping station depends on electricity. Graph theory can be used to depict the pairwise relationship between the individual components. Each node in the graph represents a critical infrastructure and the edges between these critical infrastructures represent their dependency. The modeled graph is a multigraph (inter-network dependency) and multidirectional (mutual dependence of two or more components). The idea behind building this model is to simulate the response of the interdependent systems upon failure. Building a simulation tool with an underlying interdependency graph model can not only help in understanding the failure response, but can also help in building a robust system for preserving the infrastructures. The data obtained from the simulation results will contribute to a better emergency response in the event of a disaster. The failure response of a system depends largely on the failed component. Hence, three cases are considered to simulate and identify the state of the system upon failure of a component: The failed component can be a node with maximum outward dependencies, a node with maximum inward dependencies, or a random failure of a component. If a component has the maximum number of outward edges, the simulation tool will help visualize the cascading effects, whereas a system with the maximum number of incoming edges will contribute to the understanding of the feedback response as the outward nodes are not affected immediately. Another goal of CI failure analysis is to develop an algorithm for the partial restoration of specific critical services when a CI is not working at full capacity. The selection of critical infrastructure components for restoration is based on the number of people being affected.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Critical Infrastructure, Graph Theory, Smart City, Emergency Response, System Failure
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GA Mathematical geography. Cartography
Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
Depositing User: REAL CORP Administrator
Date Deposited: 19 Jul 2016 15:15
Last Modified: 19 Jul 2016 15:15
URI: http://repository.corp.at/id/eprint/116

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