WASHINGTON-The U.S. Department of Defense, the Electric Power Research Institute and at least 27 universities have joined forces on a 5-year, $30 million project to secure the reliable operation of nationwide, computer-based infrastructures.
The collaborative effort will develop “revolutionary concepts for operating complex and interconnected networks,” including those that run the electric power grid, telecommunications, transportation, and banking and finance systems, EPRI said.
“The objective of the … program is to leverage Department of Defense and industry dollars to support long-range university basic research of mutual benefit,” said Delores Etter, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology.
“Our military operations rely increasingly on complex, interactive networks, including those in the areas of communications, command and control, logistics and information systems, (all of) which could be vulnerable to cascading effects or failures,” she continued.
One goal of the Complex Interactive Networks/Systems Initiative “is to gain a fundamental understanding of the key interrelations among the national infrastructures,” said Robert Launer, associate director of mathematical and computer sciences for the U.S. Army Research Office.
After a highly competitive process, six university consortia were selected to develop innovative concepts that meet the goals of efficiency and security in geographically dispersed networks and systems.
One such innovation uses computer-based intelligent agents for distributed sensing, computation and control to allow adaptive response to disturbances at the site of their occurrence.
“Our objective is to develop and analyze the mathematical underpinnings of these interactive networks and create tools and techniques that will enable interconnected national infrastructures to be self-stabilizing, self-optimizing and self-healing,” said Massoud Amin, manager of mathematics and information science for EPRI.
