Power Grid

Fighting against cyberattacks is at the forefront of many research expeditions, especially regarding critical infrastructures such as power grids and water treatment plants.

Addressing climate change requires a group effort from a multitude of fields. ADSC is doing its part by using artificial intelligence (AI) to assess how natural disasters caused by climate change could impact urban infrastructure.

It is fairly common knowledge that technology people use daily such as cell phones, laptops, and tablets, could be susceptible to a cyberattack. A lesser known threat is that the power grid, water treatment plants, and other daily-use systems, are also susceptible.

Evaluation of cybersecurity solutions in critical infrastructure, such as smart power grid systems, is an ongoing problem for many researchers. Potential solutions can obviously not be deployed on the real power system without extensive testing and evaluation.

According to ADSC’s Binbin Chen and Daisuke Mashima, Singapore’s power grid is undergoing fundamental changes, as the number of intelligent devices (e.g., smart meters, remote terminal units, intelligent electronic devices, and distribution automation devices) is growing rapidly to provide the power grid with real-time sensing and control functionalities.

ADSC researchers received the best paper award at the 2017 International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN) for their work on securing the power grid using natural timestamps in the power grid’s frequency fluctuations sensed from the powerline electromagnetic radiation (EMR).