IEMI resilience assessment of critical infrastructures

Addressing EMC issues beyond legal exposure limits, the term of intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) designates deliberate attempts to disrupt normal operation of electronics, from single devices up to large systems like critical infrastructures sustaining fundamental processes in society. When trying to assess the overall vulnerability of the latter and prioritising resources for protective measures, investigating the technical aspects of system susceptibility will have to be complemented with broader, interdisciplinary methodology for risk management or resilience assessment. Acknowledging approaches already suggested within the field of EMC, we discuss the concept of resilience scoring based on indicators as elaborated within the EU project SmartResilience. Among hundreds of indicators, a dozen evaluation prescriptions are included in the project database pertaining to the IEMI threat. After outlining the general project methodology, an exemplary assessment of a generic power grid substation is discussed in comparison with other approaches. While using accessible indicators enables easily performed assessments and thus scales even to large, distributed systems, more depth is achieved by the focused methods in turn requiring extensive efforts by experts.