High-level modelling of critical infrastructures' interdependencies. (2nd February 2009)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Delamare, Simon; Diallo, Alpha-Amadou; Chaudet, Claude
• Is Part Of: International journal of critical infrastructures. Volume 5:Number 1/2(2009)
• Page Start: 100
• Page End: 119
• Publication Date: 2009-02-02
• Subjects: critical infrastructures -- modelling -- system interdependencies -- electrical networks -- telecommunication networks -- cross-domain cascading -- cascading failures -- failure propagation; Infrastructure (Economics) -- Security measures -- Periodicals; Risk assessment -- Periodicals; Emergency management -- Periodicals; 363.05
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1475-3219

Abstract

Due to the increasing demand in services' quality and the growing concerns about external threats, the protection of critical infrastructures has recently become a major concern. In this article, we study the potential effect of interdependencies that may occur between two of these infrastructures: the telecommunication networks and the electrical network. In the absence of side protection mechanisms such as multihoming or batteries, these types of networks highly depend on each other. A failure of some component in one of these architectures may cause a fault in the other, for example, when an electrical outage occurs, routers may be switched off as soon as their battery has depleted. This can lead to cross-domain cascading effects in failures propagation that cause general service unavailabilty. To understand this phenomena, we propose a model that describes the behaviour of these interdependent systems. We show on realistic topologies that simple failures can lead to failures propagation and we derive the potential risk scenarios.