Integrated 3D Modeling of Multi-utility Networks and Their Interdependencies for Critical Infrastructure Analysis

In today's technologically advanced society the dependency of every citizen and company on working infrastructures is extremely high. Failures of critical infrastructures, such as the Italian blackout in 2003 or the failure of power supply in wide parts of Europe in 2006, demonstrate the strong linkage of networks across borders. However, also infrastructures within the same geographic region but of different types have strong interdependencies and failures in one type of network can have cascading effects onto the other networks. In order to support risk analysis and planning of emergency response actions the modeling of critical infrastructures and their mutual dependencies in 3D space is required. Decision makers need a comprehensive view of the disaster situation to be able to estimate the consequences of their action. For this purpose, a comprehensive understanding and simulation of cascading or looping effects as well as the propagation of the disaster extend is needed. But neither the existing utility networks models nor the international standards for modeling cities or buildings map the mutual interrelationships between different infrastructures or between the city and its infrastructures. In this paper the requirements and a novel framework for the integrated 3D modeling of critical infrastructures within cities is presented. By giving a dual re2 Becker, T., Nagel, C., Kolbe, T. H. presentation utility network components are modeled both according to their 3D topography and by a complementary graph structure embedded into 3D space.     «

In today's technologically advanced society the dependency of every citizen and company on working infrastructures is extremely high. Failures of critical infrastructures, such as the Italian blackout in 2003 or the failure of power supply in wide parts of Europe in 2006, demonstrate the strong linkage of networks across borders. However, also infrastructures within the same geographic region but of different types have strong interdependencies and failures in one type of network can have cascad...     »