Modeling Impacts to Defense Critical Electric Infrastructure from Natural Hazard Events and Adversarial Attacks

E. Rollison, A. Raffety, S. Folga, C. Samuels, K. Walsh
Argonne National Laboratory, IL

The electric power system is vital to the Nation’s energy security, supporting defense missions, emergency services, critical infrastructure, and the economy. Risk-based assessments on Defense Critical Electric Infrastructure (DCEI) systems supporting Critical Defense Facilities (CDF) can inform risk mitigation decisions and lead to the continued function of assets and defense capabilities necessary to support national security missions. Led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are partnering with electric utilities serving CDFs to model their electric system and simulate the impact of plausible natural hazard incidents and adversarial attacks (cyber and physical). Modeling, scenario development, simulation, and validation measures are used to determine the potential impacts of the hazards and threats. This presentation will describe the methodology and assumptions employed to derive a simulation-based DCEI outage event, provide context in which the modelling and simulations characterize the DCEI, enumerate directly and indirectly affected assets, quantify the overall outage footprint, identify electric components presumed to be damaged, and provide electric restoration time estimates.