Toward Developing Genetic Algorithms to Aid in Critical Infrastructure Modeling

Today´s society relies upon an array of complex national and international infrastructure networks such as transportation, telecommunication, financial and energy. Understanding these interdependencies is necessary in order to protect our critical infrastructure. The Critical Infrastructure Modeling System, CIMS^copy, examines the interrelationships between infrastructure networks. CIMS^copy development is sponsored by the National Security Division at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in its ongoing mission for providing critical infrastructure protection and preparedness. A genetic algorithm (GA) is an optimization technique based on Darwin´s theory of evolution. A GA can be coupled with CIMS^copy to search for optimum ways to protect infrastructure assets. This includes identifying optimum assets to enforce or protect, testing the addition of or change to infrastructure before implementation, or finding the optimum response to an emergency for response planning. This paper describes the addition of a GA to infrastructure modeling for infrastructure planning. It first introduces the CIMS^copy infrastructure modeling software used as the modeling engine to support the GA. Next, the GA techniques and parameters are defined. Then a test scenario illustrates the integration with CIMS^copy and the preliminary results.