Home - Crutial - CRitical Utility InfrastructurAL resilience

Welcome to CRUTIAL

Our project addresses new networked ICT systems for the management of the electric power grid, in which artefacts controlling the physical process of electricity transportation need to be connected with information infrastructures, through corporate networks (intranets), which are in turn connected to the Internet.

CRUTIAL’s innovative approach resides in modelling interdependent infrastructures taking into account the multiple dimensions of interdependencies, and attempting at casting them into new architectural patterns, resilient to both accidental failures and malicious attacks.

The objectives of the project are:

investigation of models and architectures that cope with the scenario of openness, heterogeneity and evolvability endured by electrical utilities infrastructures;

analysis of critical scenarios in which faults in the information infrastructure provoke serious impacts on the controlled electric power infrastructure;

investigation of distributed architectures enabling dependable control and management of the power grid.

The project will: a) identify and describe control system scenarios; b) provide modelling approaches for understanding and mastering the various interdependencies; c) develop a test bed integrating the electric power system and the information infrastructure; d) investigate fault-tolerant architectural configurations; e) provide qualitative and quantitative support for the identification, analysis and evaluation of the scenarios identified. The results will be validated against test beds of Electric Power Systems.

The project’s results will help in designing and assessing new Electric Power systems and information infrastructures. Thus, they will enable to reduce the current (unfortunately repetitive) blackouts, in terms of frequency, duration and extent, and provide insights to Electric Power companies and standardization bodies for exploiting resilience in critical utilities infrastructures.