Critical Infrastructure Digital Twin Blueprinting for Cascading Failures
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Solution Overview
Problem
The lack of data interoperability and connectivity between different critical infrastructure (CI) elements in a community hinders the ability to model and automate the cascading effects of state changing conditions across interdependent CI elements, relying heavily on manual interactions and individual knowledge for minimizing such effects.
Innovation Solution
A method and system for CI blueprint selection using a digital twin to model a hierarchy of interdependent CI elements, generating a fingerprint for characterization data, retrieving and applying pre-determined parameter settings from a data store to simulate and minimize cascading impacts, and creating new blueprints when necessary.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual interactions and individual knowledge are used to minimize cascading effects, then expertise can be applied, but the process becomes tedious and non-automated
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates digital twins (virtual copies) of critical infrastructure elements that replicate their behavior and interdependencies. These digital twins enable automated simulation and analysis of cascading effects without requiring manual expert intervention, while preserving the complex operational relationships of the actual CI elements.
Solution Approach 2:
The system pre-computes and stores blueprints containing optimal parameter settings that minimize cascading effects for various failure scenarios. When a state changing condition occurs, the system retrieves and applies the pre-determined blueprint, eliminating the need for real-time manual analysis and decision-making.
2Extent of automation
If data sharing and connectivity are established between different service providers, then automated modeling becomes possible, but organizational barriers and proprietary knowledge restrictions prevent implementation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the complex inter-organizational data sharing problem into independent digital twin models for each CI element. Each digital twin encapsulates the behavior and parameters of its corresponding CI element, allowing automated analysis without requiring direct data sharing between organizations. The segmentation isolates proprietary information while enabling system-wide cascading effect analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The digital twin serves as an intermediary between different CI elements and their operators. It virtualizes the CI element behavior and interfaces, enabling automated modeling and analysis without requiring direct connectivity or data sharing between different service providers' systems.
3Reliability
If real-time monitoring of all CI elements is implemented, then cascading effects can be detected, but the geographical dispersion and organizational structure prevent effective monitoring
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates virtual copies (digital twins) of geographically dispersed CI elements that can be monitored and analyzed in a centralized virtual environment. This eliminates the complexity of physically monitoring dispersed elements across different organizations, as all monitoring is performed on the virtual models without requiring direct access to the physical distributed systems.
Data Source
AI summary
Critical infrastructure (CI) blueprint selection for optimized response to state changing conditions includes defining a hierarchy of interdependent CI elements of a community in a digital twin and receiving characterization data for different nodes of the digital twin. A fingerprint is generated for the hierarchy based upon the characterization and a blueprint which corresponds to the fingerprint retrieved from a data store, the blueprint defining a set of parameters to be applied to different computing elements of different nodes in the hierarchy determined to minimize a cascading effect of a state changing condition in one of the nodes. Finally, the set of parameters of the retrieved blueprint is applied to corresponding computing elements of the digital twin and a state changing condition is simulated in the digital twin in a selected node so as to compute the cascading effect of the state changing condition to other nodes dependent upon the selected node.