Electric System Vulnerabilities: Lessons from Recent Blackouts and the Role of ICT

In recent years, both Europe and America have experienced a significant number of major blackouts. This report specifically focuses on the events that affected Europe and North America during 2003, and provides a detailed analysis by critical comparison of diverse and authoritative information sources (UCTE, Eurelectric, national and international investigation committees, national authorities reports, etc).JRC.G.6-Sensors, radar technologies and cybersecurit

The GRID European Conference on: Vulnerabilities of power system infrastructures: the role of ICT - towards a research agenda Stavanger, June 15, 2006 Conference Report

This report summarises the key outcomes from the Conference organised by the GRID Coordination Action on the key challenges raised by power systems vulnerabilities and ICT applications, through a debate among policy makers, industrial stakeholders, and research. Such a discussion was meant to be instrumental to highlight research priorities in areas covering ICT security and power system control, so as to contribute to the preparation of the next EU framework programme on R&D (FP7).JRC.DG.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Electric System Vulnerabilities: a State of the Art of Defense Technologies

Vulnerability of the European electrical infrastructure appears to be growing due to several factors: - demand is always growing, and, although this growth may be forecast, it cannot be anytime easily faced; - transactions increase, following electrical system liberalisation, and this involves operating the whole infrastructure closer to the system capacity and security limits; - an increased control systems complexity, required for secure system operation, may in turn raise system vulnerability, due both to accidental faults and malicious attacks; - critical infrastructures, and the electrical system primarily, are well known to be a privileged target in warfare, as well as terrorist attacks. In recent years, both Europe and America have experienced a significant number of huge blackouts, whose frequency and impact looks progressively growing. These events had common roots in the fact that current risk assessment methodologies and current system controls appear to be no longer adequate. Beyond the growing complexity of the electrical system as a whole, two main reasons can be listed: - system analysis procedures based on these methodologies did not identify security threats emerging from failures of critical physical components; - on-line controls were not able to avoid system collapse. This report provides a state-of-the-art of the technology on both regards: - as far as risk assessment methodologies are concerned, an overview of the conceptual power system reliability framework is provided, and the current N-1 principle for risk assessment in power systems is introduced, together with off-the-shelf enforcement methodologies, like optimal power flow. Emerging methodologies for dynamic security assessment are also discussed. The power system reliability approach is compared with the global approach to dependability introduced by computer scientists, and the conceptual clashes pointed out. Ways ahead to conciliate both views are outlined. - concerning power system controls, the report overviews the existing defense plans, making specific reference to the current Italian situation. The two major recent blackout events in the American North East and Italy are analysed, and the drawbacks of the existing arrangements and the installed control systems are discussed. Emerging technologies, such as phasor measurement units and wide area protection are introduced. Their likely impact on the existing control room is discussed. Finally, potential cyber vulnerabilities of the new control systems are introduced, the role of communication standards in that context is discussed, and an overview of the current state of the art is presented.JRC.G.6-Sensors, radar technologies and cybersecurit

Is Public Private Partnership a suitable way to cope with security issues?

This report investigates whether Public Private Partnership (PPP) is a suitable approach to tackle global security issues, with special reference to sensitive information sharing in the context of critical infrastructures protection. To this aim, it outlines the PPP concept starting from its introduction in the early nineties, and provides a critical view on the questions that arise in many application areas of PPP. An overview of the current EU guidelines concerning PPP is provided. Concerning security information sharing, early and current attempts to apply PPP are summarised, and the open issues involved highlighted.JRC.DG.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Towards Standardisation Measures to Support the Security of Control and Real-Time Systems for Energy Critical Infrastructures

This report outlines the context for control and real time systems vulnerability in the energy sector, their role in energy critical infrastructures and their emerging vulnerabilities as they were put in light by some recent episodes. Then it provides a survey on the current efforts to set up reference frameworks addressing the broad issue of supervisory and control systems security. It discusses the role of standards and outlines the reference approaches in that respect. The current attitude of Europe towards the issue of control systems security is discussed and compared with the US situation, based on a stakeholder consultation, and gaps and challenges are outlined. A set of recommendations for policy measures to address the issue is given.JRC.DG.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Analysis of the Barriers to the Uptake of R&D Results in the Power Sector

Power grid vulnerabilities are European wide problems, they cannot be solved individually but require a coordinated European effort. GRID aims at establishing a roadmap for collaborative R&D on power grid security, also based on exchange of information about national, regional and European research projects. Collaborative research programmes might benefit from a mutual exchange of approaches, experiences, and results. However, cross fertilisation may be hampered by existing barriers of an institutional, socio-economic and technical nature. This report investigates barriers to exploitation of national research results in a European context.JRC.G.6-Sensors, radar technologies and cybersecurit

Current Efforts Concerning ICT Security of the Power Grid

GRID is a Coordination Action funded under the Trust and Security objective of the IST Programme of the 6th Framework to achieve consensus at the European level on the key issues involved by power systems vulnerabilities, in view of the challenges driven by the transformation of the European power infrastructure and ICT integration. GRID wants to assess the needs of the EU power sector on these issues, so as to establish a Roadmap for collaborative research in this area. The present report provides a survey on current efforts somewhat related to the objectives of GRID. Similar to GRID, a number of European and US endeavours have attempted in recent years to draw a Road Map so as to coordinate efforts concerning energy transport/distribution research and CIP.JRC.G.6-Sensors, radar technologies and cybersecurit

Evaluating Voting Competence in Persons with Alzheimer Disease

Voting by persons with dementia raises questions about their decision-making capacity. Methods specifically addressing voting capacity of demented people have been proposed in the US, but never tested elsewhere. We translated and adapted the US Competence Assessment Tool for Voting (CAT-V) to the Italian context, using it before 2006 elections for Prime Minister. Consisting of a brief questionnaire, this tool evaluates the following decision-making abilities: understanding nature and effect of voting, expressing a choice, and reasoning about voting choices. Subjects' performance was examined in relation to dementia severity. Of 38 subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD) enrolled in the study, only three scored the maximum on all CAT-V items. MMSE and CAT-V scores correlated only moderately (r = 0.59; P < 0.0001) with one another, reflecting the variability of subjects' performance at any disease stage. Most participants (90%), although performing poorly on understanding and reasoning items, scored the maximum on the choice measure. Our results imply that voting capacity in AD is only roughly predicted by MMSE scores and may more accurately be measured by a structured questionnaire, such as the CAT-V. Among the decision-making abilities evaluated by the CAT-V, expressing a choice was by far the least affected by the dementing process