Prioritized Reconfiguration of Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems

Abstract

This dissertation contains an examination of the problem of reconfiguration for restoration in critical infrastructure systems, with regard for the prioritization of those systems and the relationships between them. The complexity of the reconfiguration problem is demonstrated, and previous efforts to present solutions to the problem are discussed.

This work provides a number of methods by which reconfiguration for restoration of an arbitrary number of prioritized interdependent critical infrastructure systems can be achieved. A method of modeling systems called Graph Trace Analysis is used to enable generic operation on various system types, and a notation for writing algorithms with Graph Trace analysis models is presented.

The algorithms described are compared with each other and with prior work when run on a model of actual electrical distribution systems. They operate in a greedy fashion, attempting to restore loads in decreasing priority order. The described algorithms are also run on example models to demonstrate the ability to reconfigure interdependent infrastructure systems and systems which do not operate radially.