The electric power is one of the key products without which functioning of our society would be hard to imagine. The electricity distribution network is an interconnected system comprising of a manufacturing part producing electricity from various sources, a transmission system of conductors and equipment, distribution systems of high and low voltage, and of technical control stations suitably distributed to control the whole network. Energy security means ensuring continuity of necessary supplies of energy and energy services to accommodate the protected interests of the state. A long-term electric power failure may have serious consequences for the state security, for providing for basic subsistence needs of the population, individual?s health or the state economy. For their maintenance under ordinary as well as emergency conditions it is particularly necessary to ensure functioning of critical infrastructure. The aim of this thesis is to examine the level of preparedness of the subjects within the critical infrastructure for a long-term interruption of electric power supplies and to create a draft of an emergency preparedness plan of a subject within the critical infrastructure focused on a long-term electric power failure. The research part of the thesis has two parts. The first part includes processing and analysis of the data acquired though a questionnaire survey. The second one presents a draft of the emergency preparedness plan of a subject within the critical infrastructure. The results of the questionnaire survey showed a good readiness of the critical infrastructure for a long-term, extensive electric power failure, which confirms the set hypothesis. The thesis introduces the public, particularly the subjects of the critical infrastructure, to the possibilities of occurrence of long-term, extensive electric power failures, with available prevention of such emergency situations and their preparation, planning and solving. The presented emergency plan draft should help with preparation of an emergency readiness plan of a subject within the critical infrastructure, including outlining the ways to solve emergency situations that may arise in relation with a power failure, and thus to improve protection of the critical infrastructure elements.

Along with the technical and technological evolution of today’s modern society, comes a new range of threats on critical infrastructure such as the malicious use of explosives, fire arms, ramming with vehicles, arson, electromagnetic threats, chemical and biological weapons, and espionage. To maintain social security, a need of enforcing critical infrastructure to withstand the damage on withheld values caused by antagonist strikes is developed. The need of establishing enforcing measures is utterly important regarding the critical infrastructures pursuing democratic activities such as government agencies, embassies and residences of the head of states, amongst others. Establishing an adequate protection to the intended critical infrastructure brings up an issue with managing to enforce the existing façade and its framework, cornices, doors, windows and vents to make them resistant to the current threats. This master degree project aims to compile existing knowledge and suggest enforcing solutions based on building technology that take the current design in consideration and provides a structural protection to withstand stated threats. The aim of the work is fulfilled through a literature study, several interviews, the compilation of a risk index analysis and three representative types of artificial buildings with democratic purposes. The work results in several enforcing façade solutions that confirm existing researches discussing fortification and structural protection, and which creates an adequate protection against antagonist strikes ability to cause damage on withheld values in the building. In general, a façade construction is to be enforced with major thickness, density, elastic strength and air tightness. The work also leads to the discovery of several, never before officially compiled and scientifically researched enforcing façade solutions. When establishing enforcing measures to the façade of critical, democratic infrastructure it’s essential to create a structural protection that withstands the current threats while also being reasonable on possible actions, the effects on the building activity and financial maintainability. The structural protection created needs to work as a unity of façade, joists and attachments to ensure the building doesn’t collapse due to local damage. Regardless of the enforcing measures taken, there’s always going to be a risk on new kinds of threats evolving or antagonist strikes summoning up major resources than expected when designing the protection. With public buildings in urban areas it’s not practically or financially reasonable to establish a structural protection to resist every possible threat since the building also needs to be appealing, retain conservational values and ensure accessibility.

No description available.

The subject of the diploma thesis “External risks of a Critical Infrastructure Entity from the Public Sector” is the analysis and evaluation of the external risks of the Office for Government Representation in in Property Affairs (OGRPA), with emphasis on the continuity of its function and the formulation of recommendations for the existing risks. The first part of the thesis deals with essential concepts and theoretical knowledge. The second part of the thesis focuses on the analysis of the current state of the OGRPA risk management system, the risk analysis, the evaluation and the proposal of the solution for the current OGRPA risks management system.

The diploma thesis „Risk Management System in a Critical Infrastructure Entity from the Public Sector“ deals with analysis and evaluation of current risk management settings. The public sector is a special category of entities whose importance is often neglected and not properly set. The vision of the first part of the thesis is to provide theoretical knowledge and perspective on the issue of risk management in critical infrastructure in the public sector. The second part contains an analysis of the current state of a specific subject of critical infrastructure in the area of a public administration and provides and subsequent draft measures to make it more effective.

The diploma thesis is entitled "Internal Risks of a Critical Infrastructure Entity from the Public Sector". It deals with the analysis and evaluation of the internal risks of a critical infrastructure entity, namely a large business center in one of the regional cities of the Czech Republic, with an emphasis on ensuring the continuity of its function and expressing recommendations for adjusting existing risks. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the definition of initial theoretical knowledge and essential terms related to the solving issue of critical infrastructure. In the next sections, the work focuses specifically on the shopping center object and the analysis of the current state of its internal risks, which first reveals possible sources of risk in each part of the shopping center, then describes how to determine the degree of criticality of rooms, risk assessment and last but not least proposes and gives recommendations for action against the risks identified.

Depuis une quinzaine d’année, le Centre Risque & Performance (CRP) de Polytechnique Montréal a mis en place un outil sociotechnique d'aide à la décision, appelé DOMINO. Essentiellement utilisé à Montréal et Québec, DOMINO a permis d'améliorer efficacement la gestion des infrastructures essentielles interdépendantes (IEI) dans ces villes. Notre étude amorce la réflexion sur l’implantation et l’utilisation de DOMINO dans le contexte d’une métropole de l'Afrique subsaharienne comme Yaoundé. Celle-ci s’appuie sur l’expérience du CRP et soulève des questions liées à son adaptabilité, à sa transférabilité et à son applicabilité. En effet, il s’agit d’une métropole aux caractéristiques urbanistique, socio-économique, politique et technique très différentes de celles du Canada. Dans cette étude, nous avons exploré les problématiques liées à l’interdépendance, autant fonctionnelle que géographique des infrastructures essentielles. Elle nous a permis de faire une caractérisation des parties prenantes et de montrer la nécessité pour celles-ci de créer ou de renforcer la collaboration entre elles, afin d’être en mesure d’utiliser de manière optimale l’outil à implanter. Nous proposons une structure de gouvernance d’un Espace de coopération qui prend en compte les facteurs politiques, institutionnels, culturels, technique et temporel, afin d’assurer l’efficacité des actions mises en œuvre. Une telle étude nous a donné l’occasion de réfléchir sur l’articulation entre la démarche du CRP avec les pratiques de l’urbanisme. Ceci en examinant la fonction de l’Espace de coopération comme espace de coordination des intervenants en milieu urbain et en menant un travail réflexif sur le rôle et le positionnement d’un urbaniste dans une démarche d’implantation d’une technologie numérique. Nous avons répondu à notre question spécifique de recherche qui était de savoir si l’outil DOMINO peut permettre de créer un Espace de coopération regroupant les partenaires publics et privés responsables des infrastructures essentielles interdépendantes de la métropole de Yaoundé ? / For about fifteen years, Montréal Polytechnique Center for Risk & Performance (CRP) has implemented a socio-technical decision support tool called DOMINO. DOMINO has been used extensively in Montreal and Quebec City to effectively improve the management of inter-related critical infrastructure (IEI) in these cities. Our study begins to reflect on the implementation and use of DOMINO in the context of a metropolis in sub-Saharan Africa such as Yaounde. This builds on the experience of the CRP and raises issues related to its adaptability, transferability and applicability. Indeed, it is a metropolis with urbanistic, socio-economic, political and technical characteristics very different from those of Canada. In this study, we explored the issues related to the functional and geographic interdependence of critical infrastructure. It allowed us to characterize the stakeholders and to show the need for them to create or reinforce the collaboration between them, in order to be able to use optimally the tool to implement. We propose a governance structure of an area of cooperation that takes into account the political, institutional, cultural, technical and temporal factors, in order to ensure the effectiveness of the actions implemented. Such a study gave us the opportunity to reflect on the link between the CRP's approach and urban planning practices. This is by examining the function of the cooperation space as a coordination space for urban stakeholders and by carrying out a reflexive work on the role and positioning of an urban planner in the implementation of digital technology. We answered our specific research question, which is to know if the DOMINO tool can help to create a space of cooperation bringing together the public and private partners responsible for the interdependent essential infrastructures of the Yaounde metropolis?

Vatten är en av de viktigaste tillgångarna vi har och är en förutsättning för att samhället ska kunna fungera. Det moderna samhället lämnar oss sårbara på flera nivåer där dricksvattenproduktionen hotas av åtskilliga typer av risker såsom vattenbrist, klimatförändringar och krig. För att kunna säkerställa tillgången på dricksvatten måste området förstärkas för att kunna skapa en robust verksamhet samt implementera säkerhet i ett långsiktigt perspektiv. Syftet med studien är att undersöka vad det innebär för kommuner att höja standarden inom dricksvattenförsörjningen och det civila försvaret, samt vad som förväntas uppnås av kommunen i arbetet med att säkra tillgången till dricksvatten utifrån regeringens målsättning. För att kunna besvara syftet har studien tagit avstamp utifrån tre frågeställningar som fokuserat på vad det innebär för kommunen att arbeta med att förstärka dricksvattenförsörjningen, vilka målsättningarna är samtriskuppfattningar kring dricksvattensverksamheten. Studien är en kvalitativ intervjustudie med fallstudie som design. Under studien har åtta personer intervjuats som på olika nivåer arbetar med dricksvattenförsörjning och beredskap. Urvalet av deltagare är avsiktligt för att uppnå bredd och djup i material. Den insamlade datan har transkriberats och analyserats med kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Deltagarna i studien uppfattar utmaningen och hoten mot dricksvattenförsörjningen på olika sätt. De upplever att detta påverkar arbetet med att nå en långsiktighet i arbetet med att trygga dricksvattenförsörjningen, samt att det är diffust vad som verkligen är målsättningen i kommunernas arbete. Kommunernas förutsättningar att kunna bygga upp det civila försvaret och skapa en säker dricksvattenverksamhet bygger på att regeringen förser dem med konkreta riktlinjer samt ekonomiska medel för att kunna ta fram beredskapsplaner och nödvattenberedskap. Att kommunerna ska kunna nå upp till vissa målbilder som skapats på högre nivåer är idag inte realistisktutifrån de olika förutsättningarna de har. Arbetet med att skapa ett starkt civilt försvar och en säker dricksvattenförsörjning kommer att kräva stora resursinvesteringar både när det kommer till infrastruktur, IT och kompentensutveckling. / Water is one of the most important resources we have and it is a prerequisite for society in order to function. Modern society leaves us vulnerable on several levels where drinking water production isthreatened by several types of risks such as water shortages, climate change and war. In order to ensure the supply of drinking water, the operation must be strengthened to create a robust operation and implement safety in a long-term perspective. The purpose of the study was to investigate what it means to raise the standard in drinking water supply and civil defense and also what is expected to be achieved by the municipality in the work to secure access to drinking water based on government goals. In order to be able to answer the purpose, the study has been based on three issues that have focused on what it means for the municipalities to work to strengthen the drinking water supply, what the objectives are and also the riskperceptions regarding the drinking water business. The study is a qualitative interview study with a case study as a design. During the study, eight people were interviewed who at different levels work with drinking water supply and emergency preparedness,the selection of participants is intentional to achieve width and depth in material. The collected data has been transcribed and analyzed with qualitative content analysis. The participants in the study perceive the challenge and threats to the drinking water supply in different ways. They feel that this affects the work of achieving a long-term perspective in the work of securing the drinking water supply and that it is unclear what the goal in the municipalities' work really is. The municipalities' ability to building civil defense and creating safe drinking water operations is based on the government providing them with concrete guidelines and financial means to be able to produce contingency plans and emergency water preparedness. That the municipalities should be able to reach certain target images that exist from higher levels is today not realistic based on the different conditions they have. The work of creating a strong civil defense and a secure drinking water supply will require large resource investments both when it comes to infrastructure, IT and skills development.

Critical infrastructures (CIs) distributing water, oil, gas, electricity, etc., to community residents and businesses, leverage cyber-physical systems (CPSs) to supervise and control the physical processes that these services entail. Over recent decades, these systems have moved to implement more modern IT-resembling solutions using Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems (SCADA) for increased reliability, scalability, and remote connectivity. This change exposes these highly critical systems to new threats and vulnerabilities. One approach to mitigate the risks faced by these systems is to perform analysis on digital representations in the form of digital models or digital shadows of the CPSs. However, this is not a trivial task in practice. These practical issues are explored in this design science research through the development of a guidance process to perform the data collection necessary to create a static digital model of a small-scale power grid CPS in Sweden. The results show that it is possible to gather information on the CPS components through the four approaches: SCADA system exports, documentation information, CLI scripting, and network scanning. While the artefact presented in this report demonstrates these results, challenges still remain such as a lack of SCADA export tools, reaching the SCADA network with scanning tools in a responsible manner, and accessing insights into the complete documentation held by the organisations. The researcher suggests these topics for future research directions.

Critical Infrastructure Systems (CISs) are key for providing essential services and managing critical resources. The failure of one CIS can result in severe consequences on national security, health & safety, the environment, social well-being, and the economy. However, CISs are inherently complex, operating as systems-of-systems with dynamic, non-linear, and uncertain operation conditions, all geared towards fulfilling complex operational objectives. The complexity of both system architecture and operational objectives contributes to challenges in comprehending system-level behavior under normal and disruptive conditions. CISs are also highly exposed to multi-hazard environments characterized by probabilistic behaviors that can impact one or more system components—leading to diverse system failure modes. Understanding the dynamic interaction between hazards and the system response in such environments adds another layer of complexity to CISs safety. Addressing such complexity is crucial and it necessitates thorough investigations to ensure the continuous and reliable operation of CISs. Accordingly, the main objective of this thesis is to develop dynamic resilience quantification approaches for CISs in multi-hazard environments, considering the probabilistic behavior of both the hazard and the system. Given that dam infrastructure is one of the most significant CISs, this thesis employs an actual dam system as a demonstration application for the developed models. Nonetheless, it should be emphasized that the thesis focuses on the generalizability of the developed model to the CISs rather than the specificities related to dam systems, which are adopted herein merely to show the utility of the developed models to complex CISs. Specifically, this thesis first employs a meta-research approach (Chapter 2), using text analytics, to conduct a quantitative and qualitative review of extensive prior research focused on CISs operational safety, considering dam and reservoir systems as one of the key CISs. Such meta-research aims to unveil latent topics in the field and identify key opportunities for future research, particularly in addressing limitations associated with existing risk-based and resilience-based safety assessment approaches for CISs. To overcome such limitations, this thesis (Chapter 3) subsequently developed a coupled Continuous-Time Markov Chain and Bayesian network, facilitating the dynamic quantification of CISs failure risk (propagation of the system's probability of failure with time), considering the temporal variation of uncertainties in system components during operations. Starting from where the risk-based assessment ends (the immediate response of the system at the hazard realizations), resilience-based assessment focuses more on the dynamic system functionality gain/reduction and, subsequently, the system deterioration and recovery rates following hazard realizations. Accordingly, this thesis (Chapter 4) presents a resilience-centric System Dynamics simulation modeling approach capable of representing CISs components, estimating their dynamic system performance, and subsequent dynamic resilience (propagation of the system resilience with time). Such a modeling approach proposes a combinatorial procedure for generating multi-hazard scenarios, encompassing both natural and anthropogenic hazards, where one primary hazard can trigger one or more subsequent hazards. As a result, the developed models can investigate system operations under both single and multi-hazard environments. Furthermore, the coupling between System Dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations (Chapter 5) enables the model to seamlessly incorporate the probabilistic behaviors of both multi-hazard and system responses. The developed approaches can provide the decision-makers with a more detailed system representation that includes probabilistic dynamic system components with multi-operational objectives under probabilistic multi-hazard environments (Chapter 6). Moreover, the developed models can introduce more realistic evaluations for risk-adaptive and mitigation plans in real-time, contributing to more efficient safety assessment plans for the CISs. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Critical infrastructure systems (CISs) play pivotal roles in delivering and supporting the essential needs of our daily lives. However, ensuring the safety of CISs poses layered challenges due to the complexity of their systems and operations, compounded by their susceptibility to multi-hazard environments, all with probabilistic behaviors. Recognizing the criticality and safety obstacles associated with CISs, this thesis introduces dynamics resilience quantification approaches for CISs safety based on a holistic system dynamics representation. The developed models are designed to enhance understanding of the system's performance under multi-hazard disruption conditions, considering the probabilistic behavior of both hazards and system response. Moreover, these models yield resilience-based metrics, allowing for the evaluation of the effectiveness of various risk mitigation plans, which would subsequently lead to more reliable safety assessment plans for CISs. Considering that dam infrastructure is a key CISs, this thesis focuses on the former as a demonstration application to show the developed models’ utility and their efficiency in devising resilience-guided assessment plans for CISs.