Vulnerability of interconnected power systems to malicious attacks under limited information

Malicious attacks against critical infrastructures, and power systems as well, became a key-concern in recent years. The attacks may be both "physical," directed towards system components, and "cyber," against the information/communication system; simultaneous attacks to different components, both physical and cyber, may be possible. In this context, the assessment of the vulnerability of a given interconnected power system, in terms of the possibility to keep it feasible after a defined attack, w.r.t a limited number of information available (both due to attacks or a regulatory rule) is of the utmost importance. In this paper, we propose a game model, based on the socially rational multi-agent system (MAS) and fictitious play, which can be used to assess the sensitivity of the system structure and operational state to various availabilities of network information. From the model both a ranking of the critical information and a strategy of network reinforcement to decrease system vulnerability can be derived. The proposed model and methods are applied to a 34-buses test system for illustrative purposes.