Vulnerability-Based Optimal Grid Defense Strategies for Enhancing Cyber-Physical Energy System Resilience

TL;DR

This paper introduces a vulnerability-based method for optimizing grid defense strategies that improves cyber-physical energy system resilience without complex multi-level models.

Contribution

It proposes a critical-components approach leveraging vulnerability assessments to guide asset protection, avoiding high computational complexity of traditional bilevel and trilevel models.

Findings

Enhanced system resilience demonstrated in case studies.

Method adaptable to various network topologies and assessment techniques.

Outperforms traditional models in computational efficiency.

Abstract

An approach is proposed to identify optimal asset protection strategies based on vulnerability assessment outcomes. Traditional bilevel attacker-defender models emphasize worst-case scenarios but offer limited defensive guidance. In contrast, trilevel models introduce high computational complexity and rely on fixed network configurations. The proposed critical-components method leverages vulnerability assessment results to determine protection strategies, effectively outsourcing the upper-level defense decision. This enables adaptability to diverse network topologies, assessment techniques, and cyber-physical energy systems without the overhead of multi-level optimization. Case studies demonstrate the potential for improved system resilience across varying operational conditions.