Critical Infrastructure Facilities Research Articles

Application of research laboratories of the university science park in research of crisis management and protection of critical infrastructure facilities in the transport sector

The article focuses on two research laboratories at the University of Žilina in University Science Park under the names “Modelling and simulation of crisis phenomena in the transportation to increase the efficiency of decision-making process” and “Research systems for protection of critical infrastructure objects in the transportation”. Respec- tive parts identify the main goals of the research, research focus and the uniqueness of respective laboratories as well as practical application within University Science Park of the University of Žilina, the Slovak Republic, the EU and the world.

Multispectral Systems of Imaging Scenery in Critical Infrastructure Protection, Threat Identification and Recognition

The surveillance system more often uses devices working on di erent bands that are used not only for detection but also to recognize and identify threats. The paper presents the possibility of protection, detection and identi cation of risks, achieved through the use of multispectral detection systems in critical infrastructure facilities. The authors consider the bene ts of active sensors based on other wavebands, such as millimeter wave radar, terahertz cameras, infrared camera and shows the ability to detect and identify the target using data collected by the sensors. Also discussed the issue of fusion data from di erent sensors and opportunities that the whole system obtained by application of data fusion.

A Quantum Key as the Fiber Optic Security Sensor

The paper describes the methodology of identifying an interference in the optical ber. The paper presents the technology widely known as quantum key distribution. The quantum key distribution is based on the technique of constant comparison of quantum characteristics of the input light source and its characteristics at the end of the ber optic. Methodology of presented work includes the evaluation of the functional objectives through the constructive assumptions for the laboratory models development. This paper presents the model of a system based on the comparison of polarization states of light quanta using two asymmetric Mach Zender interferometers as transmitting and receiving systems to enable compensation of polarization state changes at the input and output of the ber optics sensing cable. Continuous monitoring of the state of the reference signal, the speci c changes of natural or ambient e ects on the ber will attempt to identify interference in the optical waveguide as a change of the polarization of the quantum states of the light. The authors indicate the possibility of using such ber optic sensor as a security sensor to protect the extensive critical infrastructure facilities. In this article the future research conception of using compressed sensing algorithms for data compression in quantum key distribution systems is presented.

(A271) Building Resilient Healthcare Systems during Natural Disasters — Impacts of the 2007 Tulsa, Oklahoma Ice Storm

On the evening of 07 December 2007, an ice storm occurred in the south central United States, causing severe power outages in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and leaving > 900,000 people without power for up to three weeks. Eighteen states contributed power workers to restore functioning power over a three-week period. Cleanup of debris from fallen trees took an additional five months. Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are considered to be critical infrastructure facilities in the community. During this storm, five of the six tertiary care hospitals lost power. In these hospitals, the internal telephone systems failed, internal suctioning systems failed, and the internal oxygen system failed. Water treatment plants were without power for 48 hours. Nursing home patients were discharged to homes or transferred to hospitals, as nursing homes tried to function without power for heating, patient monitoring devices, or cooking. Communication for these outlying care facilities was disrupted by the storm damage. Hospital emergency departments that had power became havens as they had heat, communication, water, and even warm food. Multiple patients with injuries due to cleaning up tree debris, falls, and carbon monoxide poisoning from ill-advised efforts to heat dwellings were seen in these emergency departments. Ambulance services had fuel shortages early in the course of the ice storm due to the inability to pump fuel (electrically operated pumps initially were non-functional). Three standards of care were altered for prehospital responders. This paper explains the efforts taken to mitigate future calamities, based on the lessons learned from this event.

Resource allocation, emergency response capability, and infrastructure concentration around vulnerable sites

Public and private decision‐makers continue to seek risk‐based approaches to allocate funds to help communities respond to disasters, accidents, and terrorist attacks involving critical infrastructure facilities. The requirements for emergency response capability depend both upon risks within a region's jurisdiction and mutual aid agreements that have been made with other regions. In general, regions in close proximity to infrastructure would benefit more from resources to improve preparedness because there is a greater potential for an event requiring emergency response to occur if there are more facilities at which such events could occur. Thus, a potentially important input into decisions about allocating funds for security is the proximity of a community to high concentrations of infrastructure systems that potentially could be at risk to an industrial accident, natural disaster, or terrorist attack. In this paper, we describe a methodology for measuring a region's exposure to infrastructure‐related risks that captures both a community's concentration of facilities or sites considered to be vulnerable and of the proximity of these facilities to surrounding infrastructure systems. These measures are based on smoothing‐based nonparametric probability density estimators, which are then used to estimate the probability of the entire infrastructure occurring within any specified distance of facilities in a county. The set of facilities used in the paper to illustrate the use of this methodology consists of facilities identified as vulnerable through the California Buffer Zone Protection Program. For infrastructure in surrounding areas we use dams judged to be high hazards, and BART tracks. The results show that the methodology provides information about patterns of critical infrastructure in regions that is relevant for decisions about how to allocate terrorism security and emergency preparedness resources.

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN RUSSIA: GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF ACCIDENTS TRIGGERED BY NATURAL HAZARDS

Technological accidents and disasters occurring in critical infrastructure facilities (oil and gas pipelines, electric power, heat, and water supply systems, lines of communications, roads, railways, air and water transports) have drastic impacts on the society, economy and environment. Many objects of the critical infrastructure in the Russian Federation were built in 1960-1980th and nowadays are beyond of their service life. This is the main cause of accidents, ruptures, and crashes in many cases. However natural hazards and disasters also play an essential (sometimes a leading) role in triggering or magnifying accidents in these objects. Natural factors cause more than 70 percent of “blackouts”, about 20 percent of accidents at heat and water supply systems, 16 percent of water accidents, seven percent of pipeline ruptures, and about three percent of air crashes, automobile, and railway accidents. The majority of these events were triggered by windstorms and hurricanes (37 percent), snowfalls and snowstorms (20 percent), rainfalls (16 percent), hard frost and icing (12 percent), landslides and geocryological processes (8 percent). The paper investigates frequency of occurrence and geographical distribution of technological accidents and disasters in critical infrastructure facilities in Russia and reveals the impact of natural events on them. The influence of natural factors is stronger in the North-Western and Central parts of the European Russia, in Krasnodarsky Territory and Far East of Russia that are more exposed to hurricanes, snowstorms, rainfalls, icing, landslides, and other natural hazards. Critical infrastructure facilities located in these regions need a special protection and modernization.

Criticality analysis of Internet infrastructure

The Internet has evolved into an indispensable component of our daily lives and protecting its critical infrastructure has thus become a crucial task. In this work, we present and compare different methods to assess the criticality of individual facilities of the Internet infrastructure at a national-level: graph-theoretical analysis, route-based analysis, traffic-based analysis, and consequence-based analysis. Our key observations are: (1) The geographical topology, which is derived from a national-level IP backbone network, has a power-law degree distribution and is a small-world network; (2) A few locations appear much more frequently among all paths in the IP backbone topology than others, and they also witness a high percentage of US Internet traffic. (3) Relative ranking of Internet facility locations from traffic-based analysis differs significantly from those derived from graph-theoretical analysis and route-based analysis, suggesting that a comprehensive, high-fidelity Internet model is necessary to assess critical Internet infrastructure facilities. (4) Consequence-based analysis, although computationally intense, cannot be replaced by other rankings, including traffic-based analysis. Conclusions drawn from this work extend our knowledge regarding the Internet and also shed lights on which critical Internet infrastructure facilities should be protected with limited resources.

Dynamic Bayesian Network for Predicting the Likelihood of a Terrorist Attack at Critical Transportation Infrastructure Facilities

This research is motivated by the increased awareness for terrorism related research in the post-9∕11 era. Transportation infrastructures such as airports, metro and subway systems, bridges, and tunnels are vital to the U.S. economy. Therefore, in the wake of recent terrorist incidents, innovative and robust methods need to be exploited to predict the likelihood of terrorist strikes at critical transportation infrastructure facilities. Since the greater need for predicting future terrorist activities has only been recognized in recent years, the research in this field is in the nascent stages. There are two key aspects to predicting future terrorist activities: (1) developing a reliable and robust prediction model; and (2) analyzing the precision and reliability of available intelligence and other relevant information needed to develop a prediction model. This paper focuses on the first aspect and develops a terrorist attack prediction model (TAPM) using dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs), which can be used to predict the likelihood of future terrorist activities at critical transportation infrastructure facilities. Theoretical development of the TAPM is presented and the model is employed in two examples to predict a terrorist strike with the possibility of an airplane hijack at a typical U.S. airport. The results suggest that the proposed DBN approach, although more data intensive, may provide a more reliable and better prediction. Since the nature of terrorist strikes is different than natural strikes, a game theoretic approach may be suggested in future works. Moreover, considering uncertainty in data as well as possibility theory in lieu of probability theory are also suggested for future research. This research is the significant first step in terrorist activity prediction at critical infrastructure facilities. Future enhancements to the model for more reliable predictions using real-life attributes are discussed.

First-responder preparedness in western North Carolina: A preliminary analysis

The need for well-prepared emergency response agencies has become more evident since the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the terrorist attack on 9/11. While political and public attention has focused on the needs of urban areas, the state of preparedness among rural first-responder agencies has not been sufficiently addressed. Rural areas are home to nearly 59 million US citizens and are the sites of critical infrastructure and military facilities. An assessment of emergency-related resources in rural areas is necessary not only to protect these assets but also to support disasters in neighboring urban areas. To better understand the level of preparedness in rural western North Carolina (WNC), this survey measures perceptions of emergency preparedness for natural disasters and terrorist attacks among representatives from first-responder agencies in 18 counties.

Crisis management best practice – where do we start from?

In the last few years a number of crises have hit the headlines. These range from September 11th through Hurricane Katrina to major breakdowns of critical infrastructure facilities such as the electricity supply in New York and the Tsunami in Asia at the end of 2004. As a result, all governments and businesses worldwide have been warned to prepare for major disasters, formulate plans and pro-actively look at crisis management. The question is whether your organization has taken this warning seriously and, if not or if you are in doubt, where you can start from in terms of security and continuity best practice so as to be in position to manage crisis situations.