Connections 2003

Lecture:
Progress in Modelling Cascading Effects

by Russ Lockwood


Presented by Dr. Steve Rinaldi, Sandia National Labs

Creating a simulation to model cascading disasters to the nation's infrastructure is no easy task. You have to take into account 14 different major systems, including electricity grid, natural gas pipelines, food distribution, bankinga nd financial networks, highway systems, and so on. As anyone caught in a traffic jam knows, for example, one thing can have ripple effects. A destroyed bridge not only impacts traffic flow, but if the span includes fiber optic cables, it will impact communications, which might include banking/ATM functions, and so on.

In addition, the simulation had to include political and military as well as the technological aspects. Any large scale disruption had to include political consequences such as national security, public health, and economic impact issues. The military had to be able to formulate tactical responses within a strategic plan. And finally, you had to figure out just what would happen after an infrastructure hit.

Furthermore, the simulation has to take into account vastly different time scales: from the perhaps seconds of the actual event, to the potentially decades long impact--again, flowing across the range of political, military, and technological areas. With the aforementioned bridge, it may fall in seconds, but it might take years to rebuild. How would traffic patterns affect businesses, shipping routes, business policy, and insurance rates? If widespread enough, would you need a shift in governmental business policy to ameliorate the damage? How do officials get warnings out? How will the public behave?

The Lab has started with the Pacific Northwest. It had all the aspects and was simpler to model than, say, the Northeast US. Work is ongoing.

More Connections 2003

Back to List of Conventions
Back to Travel Master List
Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines
© Copyright 2003 by Coalition Web, Inc.

This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com