SATURN (Self-organising Adaptive Technology underlying Resilient Networks)

Within the SATURN project: (1) Imperial College will first conduct a comparative study of EU research capabilities and activities in Critical Network Infrastructures (CNI) so as to identify potential synergies, and possible significant differences, between UK and the broader EU CNI system. The comparative study will also identify potential collaborations with ongoing or planned EU research. The starting point for this step will be our existing involvement in the EU FP7 DIESIS project on the simulation of European interconnected critical infrastructures and our role as UK national representative in a new EU COST Action in the area of Critical Infrastructures which includes 22 participating EU countries.. (2) Then we will investigate and implement a mathematical and discrete event simulation model representation of the UK CNI topology in collaboration with BT, including typical network parameters and capacities, and also develop an emulation capability within our existing laboratory network test-bed. These models will include the effect of the middleware proposed by BT, whose role is to provide resilience and reliability to the CNI in the presence of failures and possible attacks. Cross-validation of the model, simulation and emulation will be conducted, and the representation of critical security threats will be examined within the mathematical model, the simulation and the emulation. This modeling/simulation/emulation framework will also incorporate an appropriate representation of CNI service interactions. (3) We will then develop a predictive model for the stability analysis of the CNI in collaboration with Oxford and Warwick Universities. The predictive modeling effort should also include an analysis of techniques that mitigate the risks to the CNI, and the design and experimentation of the risk mitigation techniques and their impact on the stability of the CNI in the presence of failures, attacks and other security threats. (4) Finally, these techniques will be incorporated and tested, and the resulting dynamic behaviours will be visualised on the Cyber Range in Collaboration with BT and Northrop Grumman.Imperial will actively pursue non-commercial and commercial dissemination of the results of this project. Commercial dissemination will be organised via patenting the intellectual property that is developed, and seeking license agreements both with BT and NG, and the SME network that will be part of SATURN. Non-commercial dissemination will occur via two PhD thesis, and especially via a series of conference papers and journal articles, and via two special issues of The Computer Journal (British Computer Society) that are being planned.