Workshop on

Safeguarding National Infrastructures:
Integrated Approaches to Failure in Complex Networks

25th-27th August 2005, The Senate Room, University of Glasgow.



New: Programme and papers | Proceedings (PDF)

| Registration | Instructions for Authors? |

Themes: Almost every aspect of our lives depends upon complex, integrated networks. These systems support financial transactions, power distribution, information transfer, transportation and so on. The links between each system increasingly create vulnerabilities that threaten both safety and security. Many networks rely on 'band aid' software that has to be patched many times in order to ensure that information and the means of production flow between different networks. Failure in one network can have unexpected consequences in other areas of that system and in the interconnected networks. The last decade has seen numerous failures in these national infrastructures. They have disabled large sections of our Air Traffic Management systems. They have disabled national banking systems, if only for short periods of time. Individual network failures have also 'blacked out' cities and regions across several different countries.

In the future, it is likely that the interconnections will increase. For example, we can provided limited back-up supplies for critical infrastructure should the main power grid be disabled. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to guarantee the availability of power to all of the related systems that these crtical applications rely on. Similarly in the area of information technology, we can create redundant networks to protect key elements of our infrastructure but the myriad of interconnections make it difficult to predict the consequences of even a partial failure to particular subsystems.

This workshop will provide a common forum to engineers, managers and politicians to discuss ways of mitigating threats to our national infrastructures. We encourage papers from a wide range of application domains including but not limited to finance, power supply, healthcare, transportation and the military. We are interested in multi-disciplinary approaches that address the following topics, although we welcome papers that address issues beyond these particular items:

The third day of the workshop will provide the opportunity for informal discussions about the issues raised during the workshop. It will be spent on the Isle of Arran, off the West Coast of Scotland.

Deadlines: Authors should submit full papers not exceeding 6000 words. Alternatively, there will be an opportunity to present more interactive work in the form of posters. In this case, authors should send abstracts of their proposed presentation not exceeding 2000 words. All submissions must reach Chris Johnson to arrive by Wednesday 29th June 2005. Electronic submissions are encouraged. Authors will be notified of the committee's decision and revised final versions of all papers must be returned by Friday 12th August for inclusion in the proceedings. There will be preprints of all of the papers at the workshop. Selected papers from the workshop will be published in a forthcoming special edition of the Safety Science journal.

Programme Committee:
George Apostolakis, MIT, USA.
Ron Boring, Idaho National Laboratory, USA.
Vicki Bier, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
P. Carlo Cacciabue, EC Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy.
Adrian Gheorghe, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland.
Erik Hollnagel, University of Link"oping, Sweden.
C. Michael Holloway, NASA Langley, USA.
Chris Johnson, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
John Knight, University of Virginia, USA
Philippe Kruchten, University of British Columbia, Canada.
John McDermid, University of York, UK.
David McGarvey, Homeland Security Institute, USA.
Antonio Licu, EUROCONTROL, Belgium.
Phillipe Palanque, IRIT, France.
Dave Robinson, Sandia National Labs, USA.

Further Information:

Chris Johnson,
Glasgow Accident Analysis Group,
Department of Computer Science,
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QJ, Scotland.
Email: johnson@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 141 330 6053, Fax.: +44 141 330 4913

Acknowledgements: This meeting forms part of the Glasgow Univesity, Department of Computing Science Research Festival. This workshop has also been supported by the EC ADVISES Research Training Network. We also acknowledge the support of the following organisations:

Glasgow Accident Analysis Group Logo! EC ADVISES RTN Logo Glasgow Univeristy Logo!