Application Background: Resource and Exchange Dynamics

• Goal/Aspiration for Project
• Develop modeling that:
• addresses interdependencies among networks
• incorporates adaptive behavioral models into the network models
• provides mechanisms for evaluating vulnerability to targeted attack and unforeseen disruptions
• Approach/Methods/Models
• Infrastructures are modeled as systems designed to transmit and distribute specific kinds of resources that are widely used. These systems adapt to meet the demands of customers given physical and economic constraints on supply. We apply a general model of entities interacting to exchange essential resources to represent the infrastructures supporting those exchanges.  This construct allows us to identify the general properties that contribute to robustness or fragility, such as the ability to store the resource or rapidly access local production, the plasticity of the network structure, and the availability of substitute resources.
• Status, Accomplishments and Next Steps
  • The model has been developed and implemented computationally in both a development and production version.  The model has been tested and studied through a sequence of configurations that have analytical solutions or limits. Model configurations representing infrastructure interactions at the national scale and a facility scale have been developed: these configurations are current being analyzed to identify vulnerabilities and effective interventions.
  • The resource and exchange dynamics model has been used to study the behavior of a wide variety of systems; five of these applications are the subject of publications
    • Competitive Exclusion
    • Effects of Inter-Regional Trade
    • Balancing Robustness and Efficiency under Disruption
    • Stability of Production Networks
    • Contaminant Flow through Agricultural Networks
• CASoS Goals: General Capabilities
• The exchange model underlying this analysis and the study of global energy systems is designed to be applicable to a wide variety of systems and scales.
• Modeling the layers of protection as interconnected networks would allow these methods to be directly applied as a new method of vulnerability analysis
• Provide predictive understanding with respect to how indirect attacks might be used to successfully interrupt the functionality of a security system
• CASoS Goals: Other Potential Applications
• Analysis of physical and cyber security systems
• Potential application to DoD as net-centric warfare concepts evolve
• Acknowledgements
• This work has been supported by Sandia National Laboratories Laboratory Directed Research and Development