Review of Computer Based Methods for Modeling and Simulating Critical infrastructures as Socio-Technical Systems

The paper presents a review of the scientific literature on computer modeling of socio-technical systems. The aim is to briefly review and discuss modeling approaches that are suitable for the simulation of socio-technical systems, specifically in the context of risk and vulnerability analysis of critical infrastructures. It is found that seven main socio-technical modeling approaches can be discerned: Network theoretical, Bayesian belief network, Petri-net, System dynamics, Agent based, SHELL and Hybrid modeling approaches. It is concluded that these approaches, although potentially suitable, have not been used to simultaneously simulate a) socio-technical factors as a cause of critical infrastructure disruptions b) critical infrastructure res-toration processes and c) societal consequences from critical infrastructure disruptions. It is discussed in what way the identified modeling approaches could be of use for simultaneously modeling these different aspects of critical infrastructure disruption events.