A Holistic-Reductionistic Approach for Modeling Interdependencies

Modeling and analyzing critical infrastructures and their interdependencies are essential to discovering hidden vulnerabilities and threats. Several current approaches engage a holistic perspective and rely on abstract models; others incorporate a reductionistic perspective and focus on inter-domain and intra-domain interactions among elementary components. This paper proposes a mixed approach in which holism and reductionism coexist. A critical infrastructure is expressed at different, albeit interrelated, levels of abstraction, and intermediate entities that provide specific aggregate resources or services are introduced.