Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Electrical Engineering

First Advisor

Bikdash, Marwan Dr.

Abstract

This research studies how the global network behaves after a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) attack. The goal is to find a reliable model that will help capture the behavior of the network in the event of a WMD attack and then proceed to a systematic analysis of that model. We discuss a hierarchical model that visualizes how a WMD attack will impact different infrastructure systems. The second level of the Hierarchical Fault Model (HFM) illustrates the failure propagation from one Critical Infrastructure System (CIS) to another CIS. Next, we construct a stochastic Petri Net for HFM of which we compute a Markov model representation that is subsequently developed and analyzed. In the developed models, both the repair and the failure are modeled to be random, and the repair process for one system depends on the actual system as well as on the damage severity in the other systems as well. For example, if the repair process of the Information System requires one day normally, the repair process will be further delayed by damages in the Transportation System or in the Hospital System. We develop algorithms and methods that allow the analysis of different aspects of the HFM such as understanding state trajectory dynamics and the statistics of the transient and steady-state behavior.

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