Quantifying the Impact of Unavailability in Cyber-Physical Environments
By:
Aissa, Anis Ben; Abercrombie, Robert K; Sheldon, Federick; Mili, Ali
Page Number:
26-33
Volume:
2014
Book Title:
2014 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence
Publication Date:
December 2014
Publisher Location:
IEEE, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, Piscataway, New Jersey, United States of America
Conference Name:
2014 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence
Conference Location:
Orlando, Florida, United States of America
Conference Sponsor:
IEEE, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society
Abstract
The Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system discussed in this work manages a distributed control network for the Tunisian Electric & Gas Utility. The network is dispersed over a large geographic area that monitors and controls the flow of electricity/gas from both remote and centralized locations. The availability of the SCADA system in this context is critical to ensuring the uninterrupted delivery of energy, including safety, security, continuity of operations and revenue. Such SCADA systems are the backbone of national critical cyber-physical infrastructures. Herein, we propose adapting the Mean Failure Cost (MFC) metric for quantifying the cost of unavailability. This new metric combines the classic availability formulation with MFC. The resulting metric, so-called Econometric Availability (EA), offers a computational basis to evaluate a system in terms of the gain/loss ($/hour of operation) that affects each stakeholder due to unavailability.