Title: An agent-based service-oriented simulation suite for critical infrastructure behaviour analysis

Authors: Ebrahim Bagheri, Hamidreza Baghi, Ali A. Ghorbani, Alireza Yari

Addresses: Intelligent and Adaptive Systems Lab, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada. ' Intelligent and Adaptive Systems Lab, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada. ' Intelligent and Adaptive Systems Lab, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada. ' Iran Telecommuniation Research Center (ITRC), Tehran, Iran

Abstract: Critical infrastructure systems are complex networks of adaptive socio-technical systems that provide the most fundamental requirements of the society. Their importance in the smooth conduct of the society has made their role more and more prominent. A failure in any of these important components of today|s industrial society can well affect the lives of millions of people. It is not only their individual break down that raises serious concerns, but their mutual reliance (interdependency) is even more threatening. Although interdependency in these infrastructure systems provides many benefits for their operation, a failure in one can ripple down to the others and cause a catastrophic irremunerable event. In this paper, we have introduced a simulation suite for analysing the behaviour of interdependent critical infrastructure systems. The simulation suite focuses on the types of services that are provided by infrastructure components. Each infrastructure system component is modelled as an agent and its services as its behaviour. We believe that this simulation suite can assist researchers in better understanding the critical infrastructure behaviour and hence prevent catastrophic failures.

Keywords: critical infrastructures; modelling; simulation; interdependency; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; MAS; service-oriented architecture; SOA; socio-technical systems; catastrophic failures; failure prevention; infrastructure behaviour.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPIM.2007.017756

International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management, 2007 Vol.2 No.4, pp.312 - 326

Published online: 01 Apr 2008 *

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