Risk Analysis in Interdependent Infrastructures

Abstract

Human activities are defined and influenced by interdependent engineered and socioeconomic systems. In particular, the global economy is increasingly dependent on an interconnected web of infrastructures that permit hitherto unfathomable rates of information exchange, commodity flow and personal mobility. The interconnectedness and interdependencies exhibited by these infrastructures enable them to provide the quality of life to which we have become accustomed and, at the same time, expose seemingly robust and secure systems to risk to which they would otherwise not be subjected. This paper examines several analytical methodologies for risk assessment and management of interdependent macroeconomic and infrastructure systems. They include models for estimating the economic impact of disruptive events, describing complex systems from multiple perspectives, combining sparse data to enhance estimation, and assessing the risk of cyber attack on process control systems.

Awareness and reaction strategies for critical infrastructure protection

“…Haimes et al [17] study risk from different perspectives, and at different levels (e.g., physical risk, logical and information risk) to create models of risk. The Network Security Risk Model (NSRM) is capable of assessing the risk of cyber attacks on process control networks using models.…”

“…Here, in order to make the IDPRS more precise, risk assessment should be conducted dynamically (online). There are systems in the literature capable of tackling risk assessment in different scenarios, varying from general purpose environments [11,16,17] to complex cyber-physical infrastructures such as the telecommunications industry or the smart grid [18,19].…”

Interdependencies between Critical Infrastructures: Analyzing the Risk of Cascading Effects

“…Several methods that are proposed for evaluating risk in interdependent CIs apply Leontief's Inoperability Input-Output model (IIM), which calculates economic loss due to unavailability on different CI sectors based on their interdependencies [6,13,[15][16][17].…”

Handling Interdependencies in Climate Change Risk Assessment

“…This sections builds upon a number of reviews of interdependencies (e.g., [5][6][7][8][9]), and considering the case studies below, to identify six key dimensions of interdependency in the context of climate change risk assessment. Each dimension requires a different response to address the risks resulting from these interdependencies.…”

“…Clearly, the modelling approach used must be appropriate to the system being analysed, and, in some instances, a combination of methods may be required. A range of approaches are available, including qualitative assessment [43], network analysis [44,45], dynamic simulations-for example of supply-demand [46] or system dynamics [47], Input-Output modelling [7] and agent-based modelling [48]. 4.…”