Diagnostic Tools to Estimate Consequences of Terrorism Attacks Against Critical Infrastructure

Diagnosing historical incidents of terrorism events within a risk management framework is an important tool for understanding the likelihood and form of future terrorist attacks and their consequences, particularly for critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure is a key potential terrorism target, and government concerns are reflected in numerous laws and documents on critical infrastructure protection. Given the lack of historical precedent for infrastructure attacks in the U.S., other approaches to estimate consequences of attacks are needed to fill a critical knowledge gap. Using electric power as an example, databases of selected terrorist attacks on electric power infrastructure worldwide are evaluated to infer potential consequences of such attacks against U.S. electric power infrastructure. The focus is on electric power system components that are attacked, and consequences of outages from interdependencies with other infrastructure. In addition to analytical results, this work suggests a framework for a tool for decision-makers.