National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) Monthly Lunch Seminar

Speaker: Daniel Salazar, Postdoctoral Research Associate - CREATE, USC

Talk Title: Risk Analysis of Terrorist Attacks to the Electrical Grid

Series: CREATE Monthly Seminar Series

Abstract: The electrical power grids are a critical infrastructures that sustain the operation and welfare of current societies in most of the world. Such infrastructures are vulnerable to natural and man-made events. Although great damage can come from events in both categories, only the latter comprises situations when intelligent agents play deliberately to disrupt the electrical service. In this framework, decision-makers and stakeholders are concerned about determining what elements of the electricity grid should be protected and what is the best way to do it. With those questions in mind, in this seminar we are going to review theoretical and practical methodological issues related to the risk assessment of electrical power disruption from terrorist events and the cost-benefit analysis of preventative measures to reduce such risk. The seminar will emphasize problems risen during a recent CREATE study related to the Southern California power grid.

Keywords: electrical grid, graph theory, vulnerability analysis, economic impact, portfolios of countermeasures, risk analysis, uncertainty, imprecise probabilities, p-boxes, expert elicitation, cost-benefit analysis.


Biography: Daniel Salazar is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at CREATE since January 2011. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at G2I-3MI, Ecole des Mines de Saint Etienne, France. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Operations Research Master program of the Universidad Central de Venezuela (since 2009) and Cofounder, Academic Coordinator and Professor (since 2006) of the online Master in Reliability and Risk Engineering at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. His main research areas include Reliability and Risk Engineering, Evolutionary Optimization, Decision-Making, Robustness and Uncertainty Handling. He has published more than 40 contributions in scientific international journals, conferences and book chapters.

Daniel bears a PhD in Intelligent Systems (2008, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain), a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Statistics (2009, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Spain) and a MSc. in Operations Research (2003) and a BSc. in Chemical Engineering (2001) from Universidad Central de Venezuela.


Host: CREATE

Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 306

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Erin Calicchio