Title: Assessing the impact of interdependencies in electric power systems

Authors: Silvano Chiaradonna, Felicita Di Giandomenico, Paolo Lollini

Addresses: ISTI Department, Italian National Research Council, Via Moruzzi 1, I-56124, Pisa, Italy. ' ISTI Department, Italian National Research Council, Via Moruzzi 1, I-56124, Pisa, Italy. ' Dip. Sistemi e Informatica, Universita degli Studi di Firenze, Viale Morgagni 65, I-50134, Firenze, Italy

Abstract: Electric power systems (EPS) greatly support our daily activities and are therefore among the most prominent critical infrastructures that need to be reliable and resilient in providing their services. They are rather complex and vulnerable systems, being composed by two interdependent infrastructures: the electric infrastructure (EI) and its information-technology-based control system (ITCS), which controls and manages EI. Understanding the reciprocal effect of interdependencies among interacting infrastructures is tackled by many studies in several application sectors. In this paper, we address the quantitative assessment of the impact of interdependencies in EPS, focusing on blackoutsrelated indicators. The obtained results contribute to better understand the EPS vulnerabilities and are expected to provide useful guidelines towards enhanced design choices for EPS protection at architectural level.

Keywords: interdependencies; interdependency assessment; electric power systems; EPS; information technology; control systems; critical infrastructures; quantitative assessment; modelling framework; stochastic process; stochastic activity network; SAN; simulation; blackouts indicators.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSE.2009.029910

International Journal of System of Systems Engineering, 2009 Vol.1 No.3, pp.367 - 386

Received: 09 Jul 2009
Accepted: 25 Aug 2009
Published online: 02 Dec 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article