Towards secure and resilient cyber-physical drinking water, stormwater and wastewater urban networks

Building upon the RISKNOUGHT tool, the platform represents the cyber infrastructure (sensors, actuators, PLCs, SCADA, historian) as a directed multidigraph, where nodes simulate system components and edges represent communication links. High-fidelity information flow is modelled, with sensors providing measurements, PLCs executing control logic, actuators implementing actions, and SCADA supervising operations.

The cyber layer is dynamically coupled with the physical layer through a stepwise co-simulation process. The physical systems are simulated using EPANET for WDNs and SWMM for WWNs and SWNs. A novel Python wrapper will interface with the SWMM API, enabling real-time data exchange (“get” and “set” operations) between cyber and physical components. This allows simulation of both normal operations and cyber-physical attacks (CPAs), including data manipulation, denial-of-service attacks, and physical disruptions such as asset damage, blockages, or contamination.

The platform integrates all three subsystems into a unified environment, enabling the analysis of interdependencies and cascading effects, such as sewer overflows impacting stormwater systems or flooding affecting water supply infrastructure. Long-term simulation capabilities will be enhanced through adaptive timesteps and event-triggered processes, enabling efficient modelling of both chronic stressors (e.g., population growth, infrastructure ageing) and acute events (e.g., storms, CPAs, pipe failures).

A hydrodynamic impact assessment module will be developed to interface dynamically with HEC-RAS 2D simulations, generating flood maps and quantifying impacts across social, environmental, and economic dimensions. These outputs will complement operational performance metrics and support resilience evaluation.