Operational Perspectives Into the Resilience of the U.S. Air Transportation Network Against Intelligent Attacks

Karl H Thompson,Huy T Tran

doi:10.1109/tits.2019.2909177

Abstract

Protecting critical infrastructures has been deemed a natural security imperative by the U.S. Government for the past 20 years. The resilience of transportation infrastructures is of particular importance, as they serve a crucial rule in economic development and citizen mobility throughout the world. This paper presents a defender–attacker–defender model to analyze the potential impacts of intelligent attacks and worst case disruptions on the U.S. air transportation network, as well as possible protection steps that could be taken to minimize the negative outcomes of such disruptions. Furthermore, to analyze the effects of intermodal connections on the resilience of the air network, a second layer representing a hypothetical bus network is added to the model and studied. We use these models, supported by publicly available data, to identify routes likely to be attacked by intelligent adversaries and those critical to the resilient operation of the air network in such scenarios. We also demonstrate the potential benefits of intermodal linkages toward maintaining network operations and identify promising research directions for this type of integrated and intelligent transportation system.

Highlights

P ROTECTING critical infrastructures is of utmost importance to national security
We examine some practical results pertaining to the resilience of the US air transportation network
We investigate the potential effect integration with other transportation modes could have on the resilience of the air network

Summary

Introduction

Lewis [1] traces the development of the US Government’s approach to critical infrastructure protection (CIP) over the past few decades. The report highlighted the role growing complexity and interconnectivity among infrastructure systems could inadvertently play towards exacerbating the effects of an outage or attack on even a minor network component. Extending this analysis, Rinaldi et al [10] explored the various connections and dependencies between infrastructure systems, identified a number of common infrastructure characteristics that are central to interdependency studies, and added that further analysis of these connections is crucial to optimal infrastructure operation and defense. Zimmerman [11] theorized that decisions made throughout infrastructure project phases from planning to operation and maintenance could cause many unintended vulnerabilities due to limited understanding of these complexities, and developed a method to track and share a catalog of infrastructure interdependencies between decision makers to mitigate this problem

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Conclusion