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Software Reliability

AFTER - A Framework for electrical power sysTems vulnerability identification, dEfence and Restoration

Staff and Funding

Principal Investigators: Dr Peter Popov

Co-investigators: Dr Kizito Salako, Dr Vladimir Stankovic

Funding: £223,995.00 (EU Commission contribution is 75%)

Funding Source:

AFTER is funded by the European Commission through the Seventh Framework Program.

Duration: 3 years, starting 1 September 2011

Project Description

This project addresses the challenges in vulnerability assessment and contingency planning of the energy grids and energy plants accounting for the impact of the ICT systems used for protection and control.
The project focuses on cascading events that can cause catastrophic outages of the electric power systems, caused by either deliberate acts of terrorism, sabotage, criminal activity, or negligence or by a rare combination of accidents, natural disasters, etc.
The project addresses both the risk analysis and risk mitigation and will deliver on two main objectives:

  •  Developing a methodology and tool support for a quantitative vulnerability analysis and risk assessment of the interconnected Electrical Power Systems in Europe accounting for their interdependencies. 
  •  Developing algorithms and tools supporting the contingency planning focused on:
    • Preventing or limiting system disruptions, using various physical security techniques and defence plans; and
    • Restoring the system operation after a major disruption (blackout), by developing optimised restoration plans.

The ambition of the project is to assist the TSO (Transmission System Operator) in replacing the current practices of separate assessments of the power and the ICT systems and adopt an integrated and unified risk based approach to assessment to deal with contingency planning, emergency situations, and restoration of the power supply.

Project Collaborators

1 Ricerca Sul Sistema Energetico - Rse Spa, Italy
2 Enea, Italy
3 Sintef-En, Norway
4 Sintef-Ict, Norway
5 Universita Degli Studi Di Genova, Italy
6 University College Dublin, Ireland
7 The City University, United Kingdom
8 Alstom Power Systems , France
9 Siemens, Germany
10 JRC - European Commission, Belgium
11 Elia, Belgium
12 Terna, Italy
13 Ceps, Czech Republic