Robustness assessment of weakly coupled cyber-physical power systems under multi-stage attacks

Evaluating the robustness of cyber-physical system (CPS) under multi-stage attacks is fundamental to enhancing CPS resilience. Currently, many models inadequately consider information flow, which is not aligned with reality. The initial focus of this paper is on introducing a weakly coupled interdependent model for CPS. This model considers probabilistic line outage rules, cyber flow transmission characteristics, and the probabilities of intersystem coupling failures. Subsequently, the multi-stage attack strategies are presented and employed by the proposed model during disaster scenarios, along with the proposed robustness assessment indicators. The numerical results illustrate the robustness of the weakly-coupled CPS model under multi-stage attacks. This lays a modeling and simulation foundation for repair crew to enhance the CPS resilience.