Adapting an Agent-Based Model of Socio-Technical Systems to Analyze System and Security Failures

Abstract

In this paper, an agent-based model of a socio-technical sys-tem is built by modifying the components and domain of anexisting model. This includes adapting an agent decision-making and communication model, a task workow model,and a performance model. The goal is to enable the model-ing of scenarios related to critical infrastructure system fail-ures, both those that are intentional (e.g. computer securityviolations) and those that are not.This scenario models the non-intentional complex systemfailure which resulted in the 2003 Northeast Blackout, fo-cusing on the people, tools, and organizations involved. Theadapted model formalizes and explains the Blackout's causes.An agent-based framework allows us to implement the modeland perform multiple iterations of the simulation. We studyfeatures of the output, and conduct experiments adjustingthe assignment of tasks to increase the system's robustnessto failure.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 09, 2016
Accession Number
AD1034475

Entities

People

  • Antonio Roque
  • Christine M Cunningham

Organizations

  • MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agent-Based Simulations
  • Communication Systems
  • Computational Science
  • Computers
  • Cybersecurity
  • Electrical Grids
  • Engineering
  • Estimators
  • Infrastructure
  • Iterations
  • Load Monitoring
  • Organizational Structure
  • Psychology
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • Simulations
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.