A Bayesian Network-Based Approach to the Critical Infrastructure Interdependencies Analysis

This paper presents a novel approach to the CI interdependencies analysis, based on the DBN formalism. An original modeling procedure is illustrated, which divides the DBN in three distinct levels: an atomic events level, a propagation level, and a services level. The first level models the adverse events that may impact on the analyzed CIs, the second one properly captures interdependencies among CIs´ services and devices, and the last one allows to monitor the state of provided services. The resulting DBN permits to perform three kinds of analysis: a reliability study, which allows to find structural weaknesses of interconnected CIs, an adverse events propagation study, which highlights the role interdependency plays in the propagation of adverse events, and a failure prediction analysis, that can serve as an useful guide to the fault localization process (failures may have many different explanations due to interdependency). A specific case study provided by Israel Electric Corporation is considered, and explicative simulations are presented and discussed in detail.