Title: Evaluating the effects of cascading failures in a network of critical infrastructures

Authors: William Hurst; Áine MacDermott

Addresses: PROTECT: Research Centre Critical Infrastructure Computer Technology and Protection, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, L3 3AF, UK ' PROTECT: Research Centre Critical Infrastructure Computer Technology and Protection, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, L3 3AF, UK

Abstract: Networks of interconnected critical infrastructures are the supporting mechanisms of every industrialised nation. Mutually reliant on each other, their service provisions cross borders. This reliance is also a great weakness. The level of dependence each infrastructure has on another means that a failure has the potential to cascade, resulting in devastating impact on the economy, e-government, defence and society as a whole. Predicting the effects of a cascading failure is a challenge. In this paper, an approach for identifying the effects of a cascading failure is portrayed. A simulation depicting a virtual city is presented, in order to assess the spread of faults originating from a telecommunications infrastructure. Subtle behaviour changes have the potential to spread, with both significant and minor impacts. These variations can be mitigated for using data classification techniques to assess behaviour changes, with an overall accuracy of 85.61% using the TreeC classifier.

Keywords: critical infrastructures; cascading failure; simulation; data classification; resilience; behaviour analysis; infrastructure networks; virtual cities; behaviour changes; telecommunications infrastructure.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSE.2015.071458

International Journal of System of Systems Engineering, 2015 Vol.6 No.3, pp.221 - 236

Received: 18 Nov 2014
Accepted: 19 Mar 2015

Published online: 28 Aug 2015 *

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