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A computational approach to determine damage in infrastructure networks from outage reports

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Abstract

We consider the problem of determining the set of damaged components in an infrastructure system solely from outage reports from customers. This problem is especially important in the context of cyber attacks on the information/control systems of the infrastructures since these attacks can present incorrect information about the status of components within the infrastructure. We develop an interdiction-based approach that iteratively determines a set of components to inspect whose damage would best replicate the outage report and thus provides decision-makers with an inspection priority list. Our approach is flexible in the sense that it can produce an updated set of damaged components even if a previous inspection reveals that a component is operational. We apply our approach to damage scenarios on realistic infrastructure systems.

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Acknowledgments

The work of Thomas Sharkey was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation under Grant Number CMMI-1254258. This material is based upon work sponsored by Department of Homeland Security through the Command, Control, and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis Center of Excellence. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Department of Homeland Security or the US Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th St, Troy, NY, 12180, USA

    Huy Nguyen & Thomas C. Sharkey

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  1. Huy Nguyen
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  2. Thomas C. Sharkey
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Correspondence to Huy Nguyen.

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Nguyen, H., Sharkey, T.C. A computational approach to determine damage in infrastructure networks from outage reports. Optim Lett 11, 753–770 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-016-1044-2

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