Design and operation of the electric power grid (EPG) relies heavily on computational models. High-fidelity, full-order models are used to study transient phenomena on only a small part of the network. Reduced-order dynamic and power flow models are used when analysis involving thousands of nodes are required due to the computational demands when simulating large numbers of nodes. The level of complexity of the future EPG will dramatically increase due to large-scale deployment of variable renewable generation, active load and distributed generation resources, adaptive protection and control systems, and price-responsive demand. High-fidelity modeling of this future grid will require significant advances in coupled, multi-scale tools and their use on high performance computing (HPC) platforms. This LDRD report demonstrates SNL's capability to apply HPC resources to these 3 tasks: (1) High-fidelity, large-scale modeling of power system dynamics; (2) Statistical assessment of grid security via Monte-Carlo simulations of cyber attacks; and (3) Development of models to predict variability of solar resources at locations where little or no ground-based measurements are available.
The goal of the work discussed in this document is to understand the risk to the nation of cyber attacks on critical infrastructures. The large body of research results on cyber attacks against physical infrastructure vulnerabilities has not resulted in clear understanding of the cascading effects a cyber-caused disruption can have on critical national infrastructures and the ability of these affected infrastructures to deliver services. This document discusses current research and methodologies aimed at assessing the translation of a cyber-based effect into a physical disruption of infrastructure and thence into quantification of the economic consequences of the resultant disruption and damage. The document discusses the deficiencies of the existing methods in correlating cyber attacks with physical consequences. The document then outlines a research plan to correct those deficiencies. When completed, the research plan will result in a fully supported methodology to quantify the economic consequences of events that begin with cyber effects, cascade into other physical infrastructure impacts, and result in degradation of the critical infrastructure's ability to deliver services and products. This methodology enables quantification of the risks to national critical infrastructure of cyber threats. The work addresses the electric power sector as an example of how the methodology can be applied.
Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices are installed on electric power transmission lines to stabilize and regulate power flow. Power lines protected by FACTS devices can increase power flow and better respond to contingencies. The University of Missouri Rolla (UMR) is currently working on a multi-year project to examine the potential use of multiple FACTS devices distributed over a large power system region in a cooperative arrangement in which the FACTS devices work together to optimize and stabilize the regional power system. The report describes operational and security challenges that need to be addressed to employ FACTS devices in this way and recommends references, processes, technologies, and policies to address these challenges.
The large number of government and industry activities supporting the Unit of Action (UA), with attendant documents, reports and briefings, can overwhelm decision-makers with an overabundance of information that hampers the ability to make quick decisions often resulting in a form of gridlock. In particular, the large and rapidly increasing amounts of data and data formats stored on UA Advanced Collaborative Environment (ACE) servers has led to the realization that it has become impractical and even impossible to perform manual analysis leading to timely decisions. UA Program Management (PM UA) has recognized the need to implement a Decision Support System (DSS) on UA ACE. The objective of this document is to research the commercial Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDDM) market and publish the results in a survey. Furthermore, a ranking mechanism based on UA ACE-specific criteria has been developed and applied to a representative set of commercially available KDDM solutions. In addition, an overview of four R&D areas identified as critical to the implementation of DSS on ACE is provided. Finally, a comprehensive database containing detailed information on surveyed KDDM tools has been developed and is available upon customer request.
This report describes the results of research and development in the area of communication among disparate species of software agents. The two primary elements of the work are the formation of ontologies for use by software agents and the means by which software agents are instructed to carry out complex tasks that require interaction with other agents. This work was grounded in the areas of commercial transport and cybersecurity.
Structured conversation diagrams, or conversation specifications, allow agents to have predictable interactions and achieve predefined information-based goals, but they lack the flexibility needed to function robustly in an unpredictable environment. We propose a mechanism that combines a typical conversation structure with a separately established policy to generate an actual conversation. The word "policy" connotes a high-level direction external to a specific planned interaction with the environment. Policies, which describe acceptable procedures and influence decisions, can be applied to broad sets of activity. Based on their observation of issues related to a policy, agents may dynamically adjust their communication patterns. The policy object describes limitations, constraints, and requirements that may affect the conversation in certain circumstances. Using this new mechanism of interaction simplifies the description of individual conversations and allows domain-specific issues to be brought to bear more easily during agent communication. By following the behavior of the conversation specification when possible and deferring to the policy to derive behavior in exceptional circumstances, an agent is able to function predictably under normal situations and still act rationally in abnormal situations. Different conversation policies applied to a given conversation specification can change the nature of the interaction without changing the specification.
The author demonstrates the Border Trade Facilitation System (BTFS), an agent-based bilingual e-commerce system built to expedite the regulation, control, and execution of commercial trans-border shipments during the delivery phase. The system was built to serve maquila industries at the US/Mexican border. The BTFS uses foundation technology developed here at Sandia Laboratories' Advanced Information Systems Lab (AISL), including a distributed object substrate, a general-purpose agent development framework, dynamically generated agent-human interaction via the World-Wide Web, and a collaborative agent architecture. This technology is also the substrate for the Multi-Agent Simulation Management System (MASMAS) proposed for demonstration at this conference. The BTFS executes authenticated transactions among agents performing open trading over the Internet. With the BTFS in place, one could conduct secure international transactions from any site with an Internet connection and a web browser. The BTFS is currently being evaluated for commercialization.
We have completed and exercised a communication framework called CHI (CLOS to HTML Interface) by which agents can communicate with humans. CHI follows HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and produces HTML (HyperText Markup Language) for use by WWW (World-Wide Web) browsers. CHI enables the rapid and dynamic construction of interface mechanisms. The essence of CHI is automatic registration of dynamically generated interface elements to named objects in the agent's internal environment. The agent can access information in these objects at will. State is preserved, so an agent can pursue branching interaction sequences, activate failure recovery behaviors, and otherwise act opportunistically to maintain a conversation. The CHI mechanism remains transparent in multi-agent, multi-user environments because of automatically generated unique identifiers built into the CHI mechanism. In this paper we discuss design, language, implementation, and extension issues, and, by way of illustration, examine the use of the general CHI/HCHI mechanism in a specific international electronic commerce system. We conclude that the CHI mechanism is an effective, efficient, and extensible means of the agent/human communication.
The authors present an agent-oriented mechanism that uses a central ontology as a means to conduct complex distributed transactions. This is done by instantiating a template object motivated solely by the ontology, then automatically and explicitly linking each temple element to an independently constructed interface component. Validation information is attached directly to the links so that the agent need not know a priori the semantics of data validity, merely how to execute a general validation process to satisfy the conditions given in the link. Ontological leveling is critical: all terms presented to informants must be semantically coherent within the central ontology. To illustrate this approach in an industrial setting, they discuss an existing implementation that conducted international commercial transactions on the World-Wide Web. Agents operating within a federated architecture construct, populate by Web-based elicitation, and manipulate a distributed composite transaction object to effect transport of goods over the US/Mexico border.