WHEN: Wednesday, March 29, 2023, 9:00-10:00 am
WHERE: B02 Coordinated Science Laboratory Auditorium & Zoom
SPEAKER: Charalampos Avraam, Postdoctoral Fellow, New York University Center
TITLE: "Multiscale Modeling for Resilient Design of Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems"
ABSTRACT: Electricity infrastructure failures propagate across interdependent critical infrastructure systems (ICIs), disrupt the well-being of local populations, and cause substantial economic losses and environmental damage. Mitigating the growing vulnerability of ICIs to cyber and physical stressors requires new modeling frameworks that integrate the actions of interacting agents across spatial and temporal scales. In this talk, I will first discuss insights from my research on multiscale modeling and design of electricity, natural gas, and food infrastructure systems to mitigate physical and economic vulnerabilities. Then, I will focus on compound cyber-physical threats, i.e., a cyberattack on infrastructure components stressed by an extreme event. I will present a two-stage methodology, comprising an adversarial bilevel optimization problem and a general equilibrium model. The preliminary results reveal the compounding effect of the looming threat on the New York Independent System Operator and the New York State economy. The talk will conclude with a discussion of future research areas to integrate multiscale modeling, energy and food justice priorities, and economy-wide decisions into the design of future ICIs.
BIO: Dr. Charalampos Avraam is a Smart Cities Postdoctoral Fellow with the New York University Center for Urban Science and Progress. Charalampos employs optimization and control, game theory, and data-driven methods to mitigate vulnerabilities of interdependent critical infrastructure systems and economic sectors across spatial and temporal scales. He has authored 12 peer-reviewed journal articles on the design of energy and food infrastructure systems, 11 of which were published in the last three years. His research has been funded by the Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation of the National Science Foundation, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the Department of Energy, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Charalampos holds a Ph.D. in Civil and Systems Engineering (2021) and an M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics (2020) from the Johns Hopkins University; an M.Phil. in Management Science and Operations (2016) from the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge; and a Diploma (M.Eng. equivalent) in Electrical and Computer Engineering (2015) from the National Technical University of Athens. Charalampos was named a Johns Hopkins University Teaching Academy Fellow (2020-’21), an A.G. Leventis Foundation Fellow (2017-’20), and a Hoomes Rich Fellow (2016-’17).
