Towards HLA-based Modeling of Interdependent Infrastructure Systems

The accurate modeling of critical infrastructure systems (CISs) and their interdependencies is essential to assessing and predicting the behavior of interdependent CISs under various operation scenarios. Existing modeling approaches have limited ability to incorporate CIS domain knowledge and capture the systemic heterogeneity among the CISs, and thus cannot simulate the behavior of interdependent CISs with much detail and accuracy. In this study, a high level architecture (HLA)-based framework for modeling interdependent CISs is proposed that provides a methodology for co-simulating heterogeneous fine-grained CIS domain-specific models, reproducing with high fidelity the complex coupled systems. The results from a case study of two interdependent power and water systems revealed that the HLA-based CISs model could capture and simulate various systemic heterogeneity dimensions and their impact on the systems behavior, thus proving the efficacy of the proposed framework.