The EU integrated project IRRIIS on CI dependencies an overview

Infrastructures like power grids and telecommunication networks are key elements of modern societies. These infrastructures are "critical" since failures, attacks or accidents at these infrastructures can severely influence the proper function of the economy, public administration and security services. Critical infrastructures have become increasingly complex and (inter)dependent. As a consequence faults might lead to cascading and escalating effects among heterogeneous infrastructures from energy supply to telecommunication, financial sector, transportation, health and public administration. The integrated EU project IRRIIS has the objective to enhance substantially the dependability of Large Complex Critical Infrastructures (LCCI). The main focus of IRRIIS lies on dependencies between different LCCI within the same domain and across different domains. The methodologies that exist today do not reveal the true holistic nature of the risks. IRRIIS developed frameworks, tools, and techniques for identifying and understanding the interdependent nature of cumulative risk within large complex infrastructures. The key concept of IRRIIS is to model (inter-)dependent CIs as networks of networks including the many different behaviours of different networks. SimCIP is the simulation tool developed in IRRIIS. It is an innovative agent based and event driven simulation tool supporting also federated simulation. In this way we capture special network behaviours and integrate them into the overall simulation. This enabled IRRIIS to run systematic experiments on realistic scenarios of dependent LCCI in the power and telecommunication domains. Additionally, Preliminary Interdependency Analysis (PIA) and Stochastic Activity Networks were used for dependency analysis and comprehensive scenario simulations in dependent power-telco network of networks. An essential element to improve the management of dependent LCCI is enhanced communication between them. The communication between LCC- I is improved through so-called Middleware Improved Technology developed in IRRIIS consisting of a rule based risk estimator RE, an Expert System CRIPS for decision support, and an MIT Communicator allowing different CI to communicate. IRRIIS started at 1st February, 2006, and will end in July 2009. See also www.irriis.eu.