A Petri Net pattern-oriented approach for the design of physical protection systems

The design of complex Physical Protection Systems (PPSs) still raises some challenges despite the high number of technologies for smart surveillance. One reason is the lack of effective methodologies able to support the PPS designer in evaluating the effectiveness of the system on varying design choices. Indeed, an estimation of the system vulnerability should be performed in the early phases of the PPS design. This paper introduces a model-based methodology for the quantitative estimation of the vulnerability of a PPS. The proposed methodology clearly defines a compositional approach which takes advantage from the usage of predefined patterns for the creation of vulnerability models. In particular, the paper proposes some Petri Net patterns able to capture the behavioural aspects of several assets and actors involved in attacking/defending scenarios. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.