A Preamble to Critical Infrastructure Modelling

Infrastructures, such as plant and services that are critical for the safe and nominal operation of society can be loosely defined as ‘critical infrastructures’ and can take on many different forms e.g. sectoral such as transport systems or components such as high-voltage power lines. The paper is split into 4 parts including: Basic overview of critical infrastructures according to the recent EU directive 2008-114-EC which is the basis for the identification of European critical infrastructures: A simple didactic kernel model consisting of two infrastructures; An overview of three alternative analytical tools for networks and; A summarized Table of modelling techniques from component to system-of-system levels. The kernel model explores 4 different cases of disruption (without recovery) and hence how this might propagate with consequent cascading effects and complete seizure of the network. Three other modelling techniques are then briefly discussed, namely, Petri nets, the Input-output model and agent based modelling. The paper closes with possible developments of the network and what tools may be exploited to model more complex situations and successfully tackle the resulting challenges.