A Petri-net based approach for the interdependence analysis of critical infrastructures in transportation networks

The paper deals with the problem of estimating the indirect consequences of safety and security accidents in the so-called transportation Critical Infrastructures, i.e., those assets consisting of systems, resources, and/or processes whose total or partial destruction, or even temporary unavailability, has the effect of damaging or significantly weakening the efficiency and the normal functioning of a Country. In this framework, the aim of this paper is to define a methodology for estimating the costs deriving from the “chain-effect” which characterizes many CIs, in terms of reachability/non-reachability of some network nodes. In doing so, a modelling approach based on Petri Nets (PNs) is proposed, being them a suitable formalism to predict the behaviour of a whole transportation network as a consequence of particular events occurring in it. In the paper, after introducing and describing the PN models of transportation CIs, a case study is presented and discussed.