Phenomenological simulators of critical infrastructures

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to introduce and discuss the main phenomenological approaches that have been used within the CI M&S area. Phenomenological models are used to analyse the organizational phenomena of the society considering its complexity (finance, mobility, health) and the interactions among its different components. Within CI MA&S, different modelling approaches have been proposed and used as, for example, physical simulators (e.g. power flow simulators for electrical networks). Physical simulators are used to predict the behaviour of the physical system (the technological network) under different conditions. As an example, electrical engineers use different kind of simulators during planning and managing of network activities for different purposes: (1) power flow simulators for the evaluation of electrical network configuration changes (that can be both deliberate changes or results from of the effects of accidents and/or attacks) and contingency analysis, (2) real time simulators for the design of protection devices and new controllers. For the telecommunication domain one mat resort to network traffic simulators as for example ns2/ns3 codes that allow the simulation of telecommunication networks (wired/wireless) at packet switching level and evaluate its performances. Single domains simulators can be federated to analyse the interactions among different domains. In contrast, phenomenological simulators use more abstract data and models for the interaction among the different components of the system. The chapter will describe the main characteristic of some of the main simulation approaches resulting from the ENEA and UBC efforts in the CIP and Complexity Science field.