A synthesis of optimization approaches for tackling critical information infrastructure survivability

Abstract

Over the years, Critical Infrastructures (CI) have revealed themselves to be extremely disaster-prone, be the disasters nature-based or man-made. This paper focuses on a specific category of CI: Critical Information Infrastructures (CII), which are commonly deemed to include communication and information networks. The majority of all the other CI (e.g. electricity, fuel and water supply, transport systems, etc.) are crucially dependent on CII. Therefore, problems associated with CII that disrupt the services they are able to provide (whether to a single end-user or to another CI) are of increasing interest. This paper discusses some recent developments in optimization models regarding CII’s ability to withstand disruptive events within three main spheres: network survivability assessment, network resource allocation strategy and survivable design.