8/20/2024 Cassandra Smith
Written by Cassandra Smith
The Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign received a grant extension to serve as a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Center of Excellence for another year.
CIRI has been part of The Grainger College of Engineering’s continued evidence of excellence for almost a decade. They were awarded their first round of Cooperative Agreement grant funding in 2015 after an incredibly competitive selection process.
“We are very grateful and pleased to receive this extension. We appreciate DHS’s continued confidence in our ability to deliver innovative and impactful research, technology transition, and education and workforce development programs to help enhance the security and resilience of our nation’s critical infrastructure,” said CIRI director and principal investigator David Nicol, who is also director of Illinois’ Information Trust Institute, which administers CIRI.
Recently, CIRI has focused on projects pertaining to cybersecurity of private sector systems as well as federal and state, local, tribal and territorial systems. They’ve also looked at urgent challenges in 5G telecommunications networks including interoperability and cybersecurity of Next Generation 911 infrastructure.
The U.S. economy, national security and way of life are reliant on reliable, high-speed broadband communications. For example, the electricity grid, emergency communication systems, smart transportation systems and so much more are reliant on broadband communications infrastructure to deliver critical services to government agencies, private sector organizations and individual customers.
CIRI project researcher Scott Sotebeer stated that his team is examining the timing signal requirements of the 5G telecommunications system and identifying and evaluating alternative sources of such timing signals in the event of a disruption of GPS which is currently the primary source of timing for critical infrastructure systems. “Our objective is to identify resilient timing sources that meet the needs of the broadband suppliers and that are reliable and sustainable as a backup to GPS.”
The potential impacts of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event on critical infrastructure is another research focus area for CIRI.
EMP events can be triggered naturally by intense solar storms and solar flares as well as deliberately from detonation of nuclear devices.
Researchers at private sector company Synclesis, Inc., partnered with University of Illinois researchers to investigate the potential impacts of an EMP event triggered by a high-altitude nuclear detonation on a 5G telecommunications system. The project’s objective is to develop a methodology to accurately predict the impact of the EMP on the physical circuitry of the 5G system in order to identify shielding and other techniques that could be implemented to reduce the risk of catastrophic disruptions.
CIRI researchers also investigated how to make Internet of Things (IoT) supply chains more resilient.
Professor Junaid Farooq at the University of Michigan Dearborn and his team, explored how to improve the security and resilience of IoT devices and components through a detailed analysis of the risks associated with the suppliers of those devices and components within the supply chain.
The team created a decision-support tool that allows organizations to identify the most critical components in their IoT networks and then to analyze the trustworthiness and reliability of the suppliers of those components. Armed with this data, companies can then strengthen their supply chains and IoT networks by sourcing their IoT components from more trustworthy suppliers.
CIRI is also applying advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to the task of improving the security and resilience of our nation’s critical infrastructure.
Dr. Bistra Dilkina at the University of Southern California has been working with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to develop an AI-driven software platform to help city engineers and planners to generate optimized plans for replacement of existing water pipes with seismic-resistant pipes throughout the LA basin which is riddled with earthquake fault lines. Such optimization is exceptionally difficult without the aid of artificial intelligence techniques.
Modern critical infrastructure is highly interconnected and interdependent. Disruptions in one infrastructure sector can easily cascade into disruptions in other, dependent sectors. Addressing that interdependence in order to develop strategies for enhanced security and resilience is an important area of research and development for CIRI.
Through an earlier CIRI research project, Georgia Tech Professor, Dr. Iris Tien developed PRIISM (Probabilistic Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure System Modeling), a software methodology that enables complex interdependencies between and among infrastructure systems to be taken into account when conducting infrastructure risk assessments. Under a current CIRI project, Dr. Tien and her team have partnered with the Illinois National Guard to apply PRIISM to a statewide risk assessment of hospitals and their dependence on water treatment facilities.
Next-Generation 911 (NG911) technologies offer significant improvements over current-generation 911 systems including the ability to integrate text, video, and other media in addition to telephone/voice.
As the nation migrates to NG911 it is imperative that the owners and operators of emergency call centers be able to acquire and deploy systems and components through a robust and competitive market with assurance that all deployed systems support end-to-end (from caller to first responder) interoperability.
To address this critical need, CIRI teamed up with Texas A&M University’s Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center (ITEC) to develop and field an interoperability testing framework and facility that will be accessible to all vendors of NG911 systems and components.
"As a DHS Science and Technology Directorate Center of Excellence, the work being done at CIRI is urgent and contributes directly to our nation's security and well-being. We are pleased to see that work continue through the extension." (Will Farmer, DHS SRT program manager - CIRI)
The maritime transportation system is critical to America’s economy and national security. Commercial vessels move around $5.4 trillion through the water each year. A matter of such importance involves a lot of thought into safety of ships as they navigate our waters. A group of CIRI researchers is studying safety measures through a project with the United States Coast Guard.
Aids to Navigation (ATONs) come as buoys, beacons, and ranges visible to pilots and detectable by ships’ radars. They are used to mark shipping lanes, hazards, and protected areas. Given the widespread use of GPS and electronic navigation systems (ENS), it is important to understand the extent to which these ATONs are still necessary and how best to configure and manage them.
There are a couple of thrusts related to this research. Heather Filippini is a research scientist at the Illinois Applied Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the principal investigator of this study measuring ATON impact on risk in waterways. This research will help the Coast Guard determine which ATONs are most essential under many conditions.
Eliezer Colina Morles is leading a key element of this research in developing a “fuzzy logic risk model,” which is a human-readable way to combine risk factors with different modalities into a single overall risk assessment. It incorporates many elements affecting risk in the waterways including waterway configuration, marine traffic composition, weather and the effects of ATONs on navigation.
Professor Eleftheria Kontou, who serves as co-PI on this project is conducting research focusing on the consequences of waterway incidents and the impact of ATONs on their magnitude and severity. “We need to understand the impact to those navigating the waterways,” said Kontou. Some of those incidents’ consequences have large economic and environmental implications. Those could mean loss of life or revenue. The researchers want to establish a model of the ATONs’ impact on these consequences.
2023 was a year of tragic wildfires in Canada. Evidence of those terrible fires could be seen here in the United States through thick smoke traveling into and throughout the country.
Wildfires can obviously destroy critical infrastructure but can also be triggered by that infrastructure. Addressing this challenge requires modelling to project the potential impact of wildfires on critical infrastructure and to predict the likely spread of the wildfire while it is underway. A group of CIRI researchers developed a plan to expedite the modelling process. Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Paolo Gardoni, postdoctoral researcher Armin Tabandeh and PhD student Sourangshu Ghosh are developing models to predict wildfire propagation and its potential impact to critical infrastructure. They are also working on predicting a fire’s behavior to optimize firefighting resources and strategies.
And, in response to repeated cyber attacks on water systems across the country, CIRI has initiated a project to develop tools and procedures to improve the security and resilience of this critical life-line infrastructure.
“Threats to our nation’s critical infrastructure from sophisticated criminal syndicates and nation-state actors continue to multiply”, said CIRI executive director Randy Sandone. “CIRI and our partners in academia and the private sector look forward to the work ahead of us as we address these challenges and those yet to come. We are grateful to DHS for this extension to support this urgent work going forward."