Petri Net Modeling of Physical Vulnerability

Several multi-disciplinary aspects need to be addressed in security risk evaluation, including the estimation of risk attributes. One of the most widespread definitions of security risk relates it to the attributes of: probability of occurrence of threats, system vulnerability with respect to the threat, and expected consequences. In this paper we provide a straightforward generic model based on Stochastic Petri Nets which can be adopted for the quantitative evaluation of physical vulnerability. The model allows to evaluate besides effectiveness parameters (e.g. probability of sensing, assessment, neutralization, etc.) also efficiency related ones (e.g. time to sense, assess, neutralize, etc.). Some examples will be provided in order to show how the model can be used in real-world protection systems applications.