A Markov-based vulnerability assessment for the design of on-board distributed systems in the concept phase

Abstract

Naval ships are designed to operate in a hostile environment. As such, vulnerability is an important aspect that needs to be assessed during the design. With the increased interest in electrification and automation on board naval ships, the vulnerability of distributed systems has become a major topic of interest. However, assessing this is not trivial, especially during the concept phase, where the level of detail is limited, but consequences of design decisions are large. Many existing vulnerability methods assess the vulnerability of pre-defined concepts, and focus on systems rather than capabilities.

No free lunch for avoiding clustering vulnerabilities in distributed systems

“…For example, mitigating isolated hot spots in microprocessors frequently involves throttling the performance of the entire device [17][18][19] . Similarly, damage to a single shipboard system can cause co-located systems to fail, inducing failures that cascade through the ship [20][21][22][23] . The existence of important local/global interactions raises the stakes for mitigating clustering vulnerabilities.A further complication that arises in many settings is the insufficiency of single-solution optimization approaches.…”