An Integrated Simulation Framework to Model Critical Infrastruture Interdependencies

Abstract

Critical Infrastructures (CI) such as electricity, water, fuel, telecommunication and road networks are a crucial factor for secure and reliable operation of a society. In a normal situation, most of the businesses operate on an individual infrastructure. However, after major natural disasters such as earthquakes, the conflicts and complex interdependencies among the different infrastructures can cause significant disturbances because a failure can propagate from one infrastructure to another. This poster discusses the development of an integrated simulation framework that models interdependencies between electricity and road infrastructure networks of Wellington region. The framework uses a damage map of electricity network components and integrates them with road access time to the damaged components for determining electricity outage time of a region. The results can be used for recovery planning, identification of vulnerabilities, and adding or discarding redundancies in an infrastructure network.