Ubiquity of Digitalization and Risks of Interdependent Critical Infrastructures

Critical infrastructures represent large-scale dynamic systems, showing a highly non-linear behavior, are interconnected, prone to multiple threats and pose risks themselves. As meta-systems, they are characterized by a high degree of connectivity, complexity and relevance to society. A single failure can cascade, potentially affecting security and social welfare of any nation. By focusing on the electric power system this paper addresses the ubiquity of digitalization as an emerging new paradigm which will have an unprecedented impact on the future developments and re-engineering of critical infrastructures and on their complicated dependencies.