Modelling and analysis of cascading failures in interoperable critical infrastructure systems

Abstract

Studying the behaviour and structure of the critical infrastructure systems (CISs) and the interdependency among them is of special significance, and if it is not determined properly, in addition to failure and cascading failure, there will be a national catastrophe. One of the reasons for not using the proper technique for critical infrastructure modelling is not to specify the entire sample space of the system and express all its limitations so that in addition to displaying accurate infrastructure behaviour, cascading failures can be prevented to an acceptable extent. Therefore, there is a need for a CIS formal specification modelling to develop different instances of a CIS, and selecting the best and the failure-free instance of it. In this paper, we provide a formal declarative specification of CIS that supports detection and prevention of failure and cascading failure automatically in using Alloy. Since failures and cascading failures occur in dynamic and time-dependent environments, the proposed model considered dynamic aspects of CISs. The results show that using Alloy Analyser, all the models made and the current failures in infrastructure are determined using counter-examples and the best instance in terms of minimum and even without failure can be selected.