Co-evolution of terrorist and security scenarios for water distribution systems

Identification of vulnerabilities of water distribution systems and identification of appropriate counter-measures are important components of homeland security. These are difficult and time consuming tasks. This paper provides a new approach to resolve these problems in complex infrastructure systems. It is based on the use of co-evolutionary computation for the generation of both terrorist and security scenarios. The basic concepts of co-evolutionary computation are briefly explained. The concept of co-evolutionary generation of terrorist and security scenarios is introduced in the context of a hypothetical water distribution system for a small town. A tool developed at George Mason University is used for a number of experiments that reveal a variety of emerging security patterns. The experiments show that these patterns may be helpful in effectively protecting the network.