Scanning the Issue Special Issue on Energy Infrastructure Defense Systems

This special issue of the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE is devoted to defense of energy infrastructure; papers present the state of the art on several key areas, including hardware, software, applications and algorithmic developments, use of sensors and telecommunication to increase situational awareness of operators/security monitors, signals and precursors to failures, infrastructure defense plans, wide-area protection against rare events and extreme contingencies, along with rapid/robust restoration. In-depth surveys of existing remedial action schemes, emergency control techniques, and rapid restoration along with tutorial-type papers are included. Any complex dynamic infrastructure network typically has many layers and decision-making units and is vulnerable to various types of disturbances. Effective, intelligent, distributed control is required that would enable parts of the networks to remain operational and even automatically reconfigure in the event of local failures or threats of failure. The events of 11 September 2001 focus new attention on security of infrastructure in the United States. Electricity, water, telephone, the Internet, and other physical and logistic networks are all subject to threat by aggressors and all have vulnerabilities that are difficult to absolutely defend. The report on the northeastern blackout of August 2003 by the U.S.–Canada Power System Outage Task Force 2003 places the focus directly on the infrastructure of electric power. This blackout was not instigated by terrorists, but it was caused by multiple failures of infrastructure elements in the transmission system. Competition and deregulation have created multiple energy producers that share the same energy-distribution network, one that now lacks the carrying capacity or safety margin to support anticipated demand. Investments in maintenance, research, and development continue to decline in the North American electrical grid. Both the importance and difficulty of protecting energy infrastructure against natural disasters and physical attacks have long been recognized. In 1990, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) of the U.S. Congress issued a detailed report, Physical Vulnerability of the Electric System to Natural Disasters and Sabotage, concluding: “Terrorists could emulate acts of sabotage in several other