Call for papers: "Methods and Tools for Assurance of Critical Infrastructure Protection"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Critical Computer-Based Systems.

Modern society relies on large, heterogeneous, and complex software intensive systems to support all kinds of daily activities. Services such as urban transportation, logistics, healthcare, data communication, railway, aerospace, and power distribution, among others, are becoming heavily dependent on the availability of such infrastructures. Any discontinuity of service may lead to serious problems, from severe financial losses to fatalities or injuries. Discontinuity causes may have different natures, from human error or unexpected acts of nature to intentional attacks like sabotage or terrorism. Safety and security (S&S) assessments in critical infrastructures measure how these disruptions are handled and quantify the impact suffered by the critical infrastructure under abnormal operation. These assessments are normally performed using analytical or simulation based techniques often addressing one single specific aspect at a time rather than studying these infrastructures in a holistic manner.

This special issue aims at bringing together contributions by scientists and practitioners to shed light on the advancements on assurance methods and techniques for critical infrastructure protection. We invite investigators to contribute original research articles as well as review articles that assemble visions, ideas, experiences, and research advancement in this area.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 1st International Workshop on Safety & Security aSSurance for Critical Infrastructures Protection (S4CIP 2016), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Methods and methodologies: threat, vulnerability and risk assessment; model based penetration testing; security metrics definition and evaluation; RAMSS analysis; crisis and emergency management; unifying modelling methodologies for cyber and physical security; resilience engineering.
• Modelling: stochastic modelling; formal methods; domain specific languages and model driven engineering; multi level hierarchical modelling; multi paradigm modelling.
• Analysis: quantitative and qualitative evaluation; interconnections among non-functional aspects (e.g. reliability vs. Safety, Security vs. Performance); multisolution processes; resilience analysis
• Domains: cyber physical systems; critical infrastructure protection; scada and control systems security; homeland security; transportations, manufacturing, energy, health and banking applications; computer networks and cloud infrastructures.

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 20 December, 2016
Notification to authors: 20 February, 2017
Revised paper: 10 April, 2017
Final Decision: 30 April, 2017
Final versions due: 31 May, 2017