A Screening Methodology for the Identification and Ranking of Infrastructure Vulnerabilities Due to Terrorism

Abstract

The extreme importance of critical infrastructures to modern society is widely recognized. These infrastructures are complex and interdependent. Protecting the critical infrastructures from terrorism presents an enormous challenge. Recognizing that society cannot afford the costs associated with absolute protection, it is necessary to identify and prioritize the vulnerabilities in these infrastructures. This article presents a methodology for the identification and prioritization of vulnerabilities in infrastructures. We model the infrastructures as interconnected digraphs and employ graph theory to identify the candidate vulnerable scenarios. These scenarios are screened for the susceptibility of their elements to a terrorist attack, and a prioritized list of vulnerabilities is produced. The prioritization methodology is based on multiattribute utility theory. The impact of losing infrastructure services is evaluated using a value tree that reflects the perceptions and values of the decisionmaker and the relevant stakeholders. These results, which are conditional on a specified threat, are provided to the decisionmaker for use in risk management. The methodology is illustrated through the presentation of a portion of the analysis conducted on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A Survey of Operations Research Models and Applications in Homeland Security

“…Potential infrastructure targets include agriculture and food, banking and finance, dams, high-profile events, information systems, public health, national monuments, nuclear power plants, and water systems. Apostolakis and Lemon (2005) used MAUT to prioritize the vulnerabilities in an infrastructure that they modeled using interconnected diagraphs and applied graph theory to identify candidate scenarios. Brown et al (2004) applied simulation to study the impacts of disruptions and used risk analysis to assess infrastructure interdependencies.…”

Using an AHP-ISM Based Method to Study the Vulnerability Factors of Urban Rail Transit System

“…In this sense, vulnerability is the manifestation of the inherent states of the system that express the extent of adverse effects caused by disruptive events that originate both within and outside the system boundary [17][18][19][20][21]. The second definition focuses on the fact that a system component or an aspect of a system can weaken or limit the system's ability to withstand a threat or to resume a new stable condition [22][23][24]. Given that the objective of this paper is to explore the global system vulnerability, the first definition is the one employed in this research.…”

Complexity and Vulnerability Analysis of Critical Infrastructures: A Methodological Approach

“…It has been widely used with infrastructures in form of visible networking, such as power grid networks [33,34], transportation networks [35,36], and pipeline networks [37,38]. In addition, graph theory and multiattribute utility theory have also been employed to identify and prioritize candidate infrastructure scenarios vulnerable to terrorist attack [39].…”

“…One is that vulnerability is regarded as a system property which means the severity of consequences under the occurrence of a specific hazardous event [43]. The other is that vulnerability applies to express a critical system component, a geographical location, or an aspect of a system [39]. According to these interpretations, there are different types of vulnerability analyses, ranging from global vulnerability analysis [44] and critical component analysis [42] to critical geographical locations analysis [45].…”