CPS: Frontiers: Collaborative Research: Foundations of Resilient CybEr-Physical Systems (FORCES)

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are being increasingly deployed in critical infrastructures such as electric-power, water, transportation, and other networks. These deployments are facilitating real-time monitoring and closed-loop control by exploiting the advances in wireless sensor-actuator networks, the internet of “everything,” data-driven analytics, and machine-to-machine interfaces. CPS operations depend on the synergy of computational and physical components. In addition, in many cases, CPS also interact with human decision makers, To improve CPS resilience, we need diagnostic tools and control tools that ensure survivability in the presence of both, security attacks and random faults, and include the models of incentives of human decision makers in the design process.

The project aims at developing the analysis and design Foundations Of Resilient CybEr-physical Systems (FORCES). The technology base of FORCES will equip CPS designers and operators with comprehensive tools that range from Resilient Control (RC) schemes for tolerance against faults and intrusions to Economic Incentive (EI) schemes for improving resilience. To date, RC and EI schemes have been considered as largely disjoint aspects of CPS technology and policy. This separation was natural due to the technological characteristics of legacy control systems. However, modern CPS do not permit such separation owing to advances in wireless sensor-actuator networks, the internet of “everything,” data-driven analytics, and machine-to-machine interfaces. These developments have given CPS the ability to inter-operate and adapt to open dynamic environments, and enabled new trends: (1) Faster operational time-scales; (2) Greater spatial interconnectedness; (3), Larger number of mixed initiative interactions; and (4) Increased heterogeneity of components.

These trends will increasingly push RC and EI schemes to be tightly coupled. The failure of loosely coupled RC and EI schemes is evident in chronically unresolved design conflicts between performance and robustness against faults and intrusions, and operations management conflicts between individually and socially optimal strategies. Consequently, RC and EI schemes designed in isolation, or without cognizance of strategic interactions and network interdependencies, are inadequate to maintain CPS survivability--especially, under the emerging threats of correlated reliability and security failures. To enable resilient CPS design and operation, FORCES provides scientific methods for co-design of RC and EI schemes and technological tools for implementing them.