Generating Synthetic Systems of Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Networks

The lack of data on critical infrastructure systems has hindered research progress in modeling and optimizing the system performance. This study develops a method for generating synthetic interdependent critical infrastructure networks (SICIN) using simulation and nonlinear optimization techniques. SICIN consists of three components: 1) determining the location of facilities in individual networks via a modified simulated annealing algorithm; 2) generating interdependent links based on a novel pseudo-tripartite graph algorithm, and 3) simulating network flow using nonlinear optimization considering the operations of individual networks and their interdependencies. Two existing systems of interdependent infrastructure networks are used to validate the proposed method. The results demonstrate that SICIN outperforms state-of-the-art simulation methods according to multiple topological and flow measures of similarity between the simulated and real networks. The outcomes of this research include 1) a sample of a simulated system of interdependent networks that can serve as a test case for infrastructure models and 2) a generalized algorithm that can be used to generate synthetic interdependent infrastructures given partial data of any real network.