Allocating countermeasures to defend water distribution systems against terrorist attack
Authored by Emily Zechman Berglund, Jacob Monroe, Elizabeth Ramsey
Date Published: 2018
DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2018.02.014
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Abstract
Water distribution networks are critical infrastructure systems that are
vulnerable to terrorist attack. Water utility management has the goal of
protecting public health by allocating countermeasures, including
security equipment and personnel, as a first line of defense. A
malevolent actor may select an attack location, however, using a set of
unknown priorities that include performance and susceptibility criteria.
This research develops a multi-agent framework to simulate the attack
and defense of a distribution system to analyze security resource
allocation strategies for protecting against chemical contamination
events. A single period attacker-defender game is simulated, in which an
attacker seeks to contaminate a system node with high attack utility,
and a group of defenders seeks to minimize the public health impact from
intentional attack. Terrorist agent decisions are simulated using a
multi-attribute utility function, and multiple cases are constructed to
simulate alternative rankings of criteria. The water utility manager
agent assigns security personnel and deterrent security equipment to
nodes using one of three security resource allocation strategies. The
agent-based modeling framework is applied to simulate attack and defense
for a virtual municipality, D-town. Strategies are evaluated based on
the number of consumers exposed to a critical dose when a contaminant is
released. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Tags
Infrastructure
Network
Model
Methodology
Identification
Threat
Contamination event
Water supply security
Countermeasures
Police
officers
Security equipment
Physical infrastructure network
Ranking