The stability and well-operation of a future electricity grid which includes numerous components of smart grid technology is becoming much more dependent on the correct operation of the supporting IT, and in this respect may become more attractive to malicious attacks. To understand the vulnerabilities, interdependencies between the electrical distribution grid and IT components as well as critical infrastructures such as water supply and health care has to be simulated and evaluated. To describe complex interdependencies of CIs, different simulation approaches exist and one of them is the multi agent based approach. It allows to introduce distributed problem solving and considers trade-offs between the interests of all parties involved. All parties of interest, e.g. various critical infrastructures, population, crisis management organizations, resources can be represented by one or more individual agents. Any agent interacts with others and the relevant environment. This interaction is based on a set of rules, which represent the interaction in reality. In this way, CI components are represented by individual agents that can interact with each other and also negotiate about resources needed.

This lecture reports about the work performed at KIT in the frame of the Helmholtz project “Portfolio Security” using the city of Karlsruhe as simulation object. Agent based modelling will be introduced and the possibilities for supporting the decision making team during a long-lasting power blackout discussed.