Risk Assessment, Modeling, and Ranking for Power Network Facilities Regarding to Sabotage

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Abstract

The power networks as a critical infrastructures are strategic targets for terrorist attacks. Therefore, providing solutions to deal with these threats is necessary for security assessment. This paper presents a method based on the risk assessment by which the planners are able to evaluate the power network security regarding to terrorist attacks. In this way, first, the variables affecting the terrorist groups decision-making for attacking the power systems are determined, and then by employing the Bayesian network which is derived from the probability theory, a model is proposed to estimate the probability of the attack against the power network facilities and its possible consequences. Finally, by determining the extend of damage caused by the attack on power network, the proposed model is used to calculate the risk of the attack on power system facilities. Also, in order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the risk value for a specific network is estimated and its facilities are ranked according to the level of risk.

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