Modelling cyber resilience in a water treatment and distribution system

Considering the increasing introduction of cyber-physical systems in modern industrial plants, the analysis of systems’ performance pushes for developing a cyber resilience perspective to complement a traditional physical resilience assessment. This point of view becomes central for critical infrastructures, considering the potential societal and economic consequences a disruption may have. This work provides a cyber-resilience simulation-based assessment for a seawater desalination plant and its connected distribution system. For this purpose, a digital twin has been developed. It integrates a MATLAB/Simulink model of the reverse osmosis treatment plant with a georeferenced water distribution network designed in EPANET. Four stochastic cyber resilience metrics have been proposed and computed to assess the impact of a successful replay cyber attack. The results exemplify the benefits of cyber-physical simulations to understand the behavior of modern water treatment plants, to identify system’s criticalities, and eventually to support decision making by identifying hotspots and prioritizing mitigating actions.