Grid Information Systems Research Articles

Enhancing green energy security: exploring multi-agent systems perspectives for a secure smart grid information System

In a world increasingly dependent on green energy and interconnected systems, the energy security has become a top priority. Smart grid technology is one of the most important green innovations in this area. It promises efficient energy management and an increased use of renewable resources. However, given the various vulnerabilities in smart grids and the history of cyber-attacks on energy systems, securing their communications is becoming more important than ever. This article examines the importance of securing smart grid information systems. It also explores the similarities in structure and function between multi-agent systems and an interconnected Microgrids network in a smart grid environment. In addition, different types of cyber threats to smart grid information systems are discussed and various existing approaches for detecting and mitigating these attacks are outlined. The paper concludes by suggesting that the use of Multi-Agent Systems principles in smart grid information systems can lead to innovative solutions for addressing their collaboration security challenges in the face of cyber threats, thus contributing to a greener and more resilient future.

SI/IT STRATEGIC PLANNING USING WARD AND PEPPARD METHODS (CASE STUDY: PT. XY)

The role of information systems in the company is an important part to assist in business processes. However, there are still obstacles in the company's business processes that are not appropriate with the vision and mission as well as the goals of the company. So, good and appropriate IS/IT strategic planning is needed to be able to help companies compete. The purpose of this research is to analyze the strategic planning of the business information system of PT. XY so that it is expected to solve the problem. This study uses a qualitative method conducted by conducting interviews with one of the employees and literature studies which are then analyzed using the Ward and Peppard method which includes Value Chain Activity analysis, Five Competitive Forces analysis, SWOT analysis, Application Portfolio using McFarlan Strategic Grid and proposal analysis information systems. The final result of this research is a portfolio of information system applications such as a Website-based Inventory Management System. In addition, there is an implementation plan for the proposed information system which is expected to help business processes become more efficient and effective

Grid Information Systems: Past, Present and Future

Grid information systems enable the discovery of resources in a grid computing infrastructure and provide further information about their structure and state. The original concepts for a grid information system were defined over 20 years ago and the GLUE 2.0 information model specification was published 10 years ago. This contribution describes the current status and highlights the changes over the years. It provides an overview of today’s usage from analysing the system logs and compares this with results from over a decade ago. A critical analysis of the system is provided with lessons learned and some perspectives for the future.

Information Security Risk Propagation Model Based on the SEIR Infectious Disease Model for Smart Grid

With the high integration of smart grid information and physical systems, the security of information systems must affect the safe and stable operation of physical systems. Risk assessment is an effectual means to objectively evaluate the information security threats of the smart grid. However, the existing risk assessment methods are aim at solving the threat of security risks in communication networks and information systems in the smart grid, but there is no in-depth study on how the spread of information security risks between information systems and physical systems in the smart grid. Therefore, based on the traditional infectious disease transmission theory, the information security risk propagation model based on the Susceptible–Exposed–Infected–Recovered (SEIR) infectious disease model for smart grid (ISRP-SEIRIDM) is proposed in this paper. In ISRP-SEIRIDM, we analyze the information interaction between information collection devices and define the connection of nature and the security risks between the information collection devices in the smart grid. At the same time, we also study the impact of the number of information acquisition devices and information interaction capabilities of these devices on the speed of security risk transmission between information systems and physics systems in the smart grid and the maximum risk range. Experimental results show that the risk propagation range can be significantly reduced by optimizing the data interaction capability and information transmission path between information collection devices in the smart grid; when a probability from a susceptible state to an exposed state reduces by 0.15, the maximum spread and average spread of security risk will be reduced by 7% and 1.96%, respectively.

Research on Security and Protection of Grid System Information Communication Network

Smart Grid is the product of deep integration of power system and information network. It applies advanced control technology, communications, information and networking to power systems. In the power generation, transmission, substation, power distribution, power consumption and dispatching, the integrated two-way flow of power flow and information flow is realized in the power grid. The smart grid information exchange is frequent, the coverage is large, the related equipment is complex, and any node may have information security problems, which causes the smart grid to malfunction and cause different degrees of harm to the society. Therefore, information security issues have become an important factor affecting the development of smart grids. This paper discusses the development overview, architecture and key technologies of smart grids and analysis the security risks of current smart grid information systems. Aiming at the information security problem in smart grid information communication system, an access control scheme is proposed to facilitate key management and maintenance, which improves the security of the communication system in the smart grid, enabling the smart grid system to operate more safely and reduce the harm caused by grid damage to society.

An Evaluation of Information Consistency in Grid Information Systems

A Grid information system resolves queries that may need to consider all information sources (Grid services), which are widely distributed geographically, in order to enable efficient Grid functions that may utilise multiple cooperating services. Fundamentally this can be achieved by either moving the query to the data (query shipping) or moving the data to the query (data shipping). Existing Grid information system implementations have adopted one of the two approaches. This paper explores the two approaches in further detail by evaluating them to the best possible extent with respect to Grid information system benchmarking metrics. A Grid information system that follows the data shipping approach based on the replication of information that aims to improve the currency for highly-mutable information is presented. An implementation of this, based on an Enterprise Messaging System, is evaluated using the benchmarking method and the consequence of the results for the design of Grid information systems is discussed.

Using information systems to improve energy efficiency: Do smart meters make a difference?

The large-scale generation of electricity is a major contributor to increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions, putting pressure on the industry to reduce its environmental impacts. Electricity utility companies are looking to two strategies to help make this happen: the smart grid and demand-side management. Viewing the challenge from an IS perspective, this study attempts to answer the question: do smart grid information systems and technologies make a difference in utilities' efforts to promote energy efficiency? Drawing on organizational information processing theory and extending it by integrating the concept of information waste, two competing hypotheses are developed and tested using hierarchical regression and data from 543 U.S. electricity utilities. The model, incorporating four levels of metering devices, is found to explain a high portion of the variance in energy efficiency effects of demand-side management programs. This suggests that there are IS-enabled information processing capacities within smart meters that have a significant influence on utilities' EDM effectiveness. However, the results also point to the potential for both positive and negative effects. Implications of these findings for practice and future research directions are discussed.

Designing the Next Generation Grid Information System

Grid information systems play a core role in today's production Grid infrastructures. They provide a coherent view of the Grid services in the infrastructure while addressing the performance, robustness and scalability issues that occur in dynamic, large-scale, distributed systems. As the number of services within these infrastructures continues to grow, it must be ensured that the Grid information system will meet the future scalability requirements. This paper discusses the various fundamental design changes that could be made to improve scalability, and presents preliminary results from the evaluation of various alternative technologies.

An investigation into the mutability of information in production Grid information systems

Grid Information Systems are mission-critical components in today's production Grid infrastructures. They enable users, applications and services to discover which services exist in the infrastructure and further information about their service structure and state. As the Grid Information System is pervasive throughout a Grid infrastructure, it is especially sensitive to the size of the infrastructure, and the usage of the information system increases as the infrastructure grows. Grid interoperation activities and the paradigm of multi-core processors are two main factors driving the growth of Grid infrastructures. Additional sites will bring extra resources and hence inject more information into the information system. An increasing number of cores will add to the existing execution environments available in the infrastructure, which in turn will cause an additional query load from the increased number of simultaneous computing activities that the infrastructure can support. To ensure that the current information systems are able to handle this increase in scale, it is necessary to understand where performance optimisations can be made. This paper investigates the mutability of information in the production information system of the Enabling Grid for E-Science (EGEE) project for the purpose of understanding how to best optimise the existing systems.

GStat 2.0: Grid Information System Status Monitoring

Grid Information Systems are mission-critical components in today's production grid infrastructures. They enable users, applications and services to discover which services exist in the infrastructure and further information about the service structure and state. It is therefore important that the information system components themselves are functioning correctly and that the information content is reliable. Grid Status (GStat) is a tool that monitors the structural integrity of the EGEE information system, which is a hierarchical system built out of more than 260 site-level and approximately 70 global aggregation services. It also checks the information content and presents summary and history displays for Grid Operators and System Administrators. A major new version, GStat 2.0, aims to build on the production experience of GStat and provides additional functionality, which enables it to be extended and combined with other tools. This paper describes the new architecture used for GStat 2.0 and how it can be used at all levels to help provide a reliable information system.

Scalability and performance analysis of the EGEE information system

Grid information systems are mission-critical components in today's production grid infrastructures. They provide detailed information about grid services which is needed for job submission, data management and general monitoring of the grid. As the number of services within these infrastructures continues to grow, it must be understood if the current information system used in EGEE has the capacity to handle the extra load. This paper describes the current usage of the EGEE information system obtained by monitoring the existing system. A test framework is described which simulates the existing usage patterns and can be used to measure the performance of information systems. The framework is then used to conduct tests on the existing EGEE information system components to evaluate various performance enhancements. Finally, the framework is used to simulate the performance of the information system if the existing grid would double in size.

Grid interoperability: joining grid information systems

A grid is defined as being ‘coordinated resource sharing and problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organizations’. Over recent years a number of grid projects, many of which have a strong regional presence, have emerged to help coordinate institutions and enable grids. Today, we face a situation where a number of grid projects exist, most of which are using slightly different middleware. Grid interoperation is trying to bridge these differences and enable Virtual Organizations to access resources at the institutions independent of their grid project affiliation. Grid interoperation is usually a bilateral activity between two grid infrastructures. Recently within the Open Grid Forum, the Grid Interoperability Now (GIN) Community Group is trying to build upon these bilateral activities. The GIN group is a focal point where all the infrastructures can come together to share ideas and experiences on grid interoperation. It is hoped that each bilateral activity will bring us one step closer to the overall goal of a uniform grid landscape. A fundamental aspect of a grid is the information system, which is used to find available grid services. As different grids use different information systems, interoperation between these systems is crucial for grid interoperability. This paper describes the work carried out to overcome these differences between a number of grid projects and the experiences gained. It focuses on the different techniques used and highlights the important areas for future standardization.

Novel mediator architectures for Grid information systems

Virtualization is one of the key features of the Grid. As data-intensive applications gain on importance, it becomes crucial for the success of the Grid to provide transparent access to distributed/heterogeneous data sources as well. In this paper, we describe our concepts to provide a Virtual Data Source (VDS) – a logically single homogeneous data source – on the Grid. Various data sources like relational/XML databases and comma separated value files can be combined via a Mapping Schema. By allowing to invoke user defined functions during the mediation a flexible way of resolving heterogeneities is provided. To show the feasibility of the developed concepts and elaborate the basis for a dynamic version they have been seamlessly integrated into OGSA-DAI to provide a non-proprietary, centralized and easy to integrate solution.