Serious gaming for interdependent critical infrastructure (CI) resilience determination

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12412225-B2
Application number	US-202217736943-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 4, 2022
Priority date	May 4, 2022
Publication date	Sep 9, 2025
Grant date	Sep 9, 2025

Abstract

Serious gaming for interrelated critical infrastructure (CI) resilience improvement includes receiving from a serious gaming participant a selection of an anomalous event for a geographic region for which a hierarchy of CI elements has been modeled, and a specified change in allocation of at least one resource in a corresponding one of the CI elements. A previously determined cascading impact upon the CI elements resulting from the anomalous event is then retrieved and compared to a hypothetical cascading impact produced by a simulation of the model with the specified change. A visualization of the comparison is transmitted to the serious gaming participant so as to show the result of the hypothetical change in resources upon the cascading impact of the event in the hierarchy of CI elements.

First claim

We claim:

1. A serious gaming method for interrelated critical infrastructure (CI) resilience improvement comprising:
generating a CI hierarchical model in memory of a computing platform modeling an interdependent hierarchy of CI elements of a geographic region;
authenticating a multiplicity of different serious gaming participants to access the CI hierarchical model from different computing devices over a data communications network;
receiving from over the data communications network into the computing platform from one of the serious gaming participants, a selection of an anomalous event for the geographic region and a specified change in allocation of at least one resource in a corresponding one of the CI elements;
retrieving from the memory in the computing platform a previously determined cascading impact upon a multiplicity of the CI elements resulting from the anomalous event;
executing in the computing platform a simulation of an impact of the anomalous event upon the CI hierarchical model including the specified change in allocation;
computing in the memory a hypothetical cascading impact from the simulation; and,
transmitting over the data communications network to a corresponding one of the computing devices of the one of the serious gaming participants a visualization of a comparison of the hypothetical cascading impact with the determined cascading impact.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving over the data communications network in the computing platform from others of the gaming participants, other specified changes in the allocation of at least one resource in a corresponding one of the CI elements;
executing additional simulations for each of the others of the gaming participants, each of the additional simulations simulating a corresponding impact of the anomalous event upon the CI hierarchical model including a respective one of the other specified changes in allocation;
computing an additional hypothetical cascading impact for each of the additional simulations; and,
transmitting to each one of the computing devices for corresponding ones of the others of the gaming participants, an associated visualization of a comparison of each of the additional hypothetical cascading impacts with the determined cascading impact.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the specified change in allocation is an additional power source modeled at a node of the CI hierarchical model corresponding to a particular one of the CI elements.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the specified change in allocation is additional network bandwidth modeled at a node of the CI hierarchical model corresponding to a particular one of the CI elements.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein each of the CI elements is modeled with a corresponding node in the CI hierarchical model, and each said corresponding node is assigned a resilience value as a function of allocated resources to the corresponding node, the resilience value limiting an impact of a state change sensed in an adjacent node in the CI hierarchical model so as to limit the hypothetical cascading impact from the simulation.

6. A data processing system adapted for serious gaming for interrelated critical infrastructure (CI) resilience improvement, the system comprising:
a host computing platform comprising one or more computers, each with memory and one or processing units including one or more processing cores; and,
a serious gaming module comprising computer program instructions enabled while executing in the memory of at least one of the processing units of the host computing platform to perform:
generating a CI hierarchical model in memory of a computing platform modeling an interdependent hierarchy of CI elements of a geographic region;
authenticating a multiplicity of different serious gaming participants to access the CI hierarchical model from different computing devices over a data communications network;
receiving from over the data communications network into the computing platform from one of the serious gaming participants, a selection of an anomalous event for the geographic region and a specified change in allocation of at least one resource in a corresponding one of the CI elements;
retrieving from the memory in the computing platform a previously determined cascading impact upon a multiplicity of the CI elements resulting from the anomalous event;
executing in the computing platform a simulation of an impact of the anomalous event upon the CI hierarchical model including the specified change in allocation;
computing in the memory a hypothetical cascading impact from the simulation; and,
transmitting over the data communications network to a corresponding one of the computing devices of the one of the serious gaming participants a visualization of a comparison of the hypothetical cascading impact with the determined cascading impact.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the program instructions are further enabled to perform:
receiving over the data communications network in the computing platform from others of the gaming participants, other specified changes in the allocation of at least one resource in a corresponding one of the CI elements;
executing additional simulations for each of the others of the gaming participants, each of the additional simulations simulating a corresponding impact of the anomalous event upon the CI hierarchical model including a respective one of the other specified changes in allocation;
computing an additional hypothetical cascading impact for each of the additional simulations; and,
transmitting to each one of the computing devices for corresponding ones of the others of the gaming participants, an associated visualization of a comparison of each of the additional hypothetical cascading impacts with the determined cascading impact.

8. The system of claim 6 , wherein the specified change in allocation is an additional power source modeled at a node of the CI hierarchical model corresponding to a particular one of the CI elements.

9. The system of claim 6 , wherein the specified change in allocation is additional network bandwidth modeled at a node of the CI hierarchical model corresponding to a particular one of the CI elements.

10. The system of claim 6 , wherein each of the CI elements is modeled with a corresponding node in the CI hierarchical model, and each said corresponding node is assigned a resilience value as a function of allocated resources to the corresponding node, the resilience value limiting an impact of a state change sensed in an adjacent node in the CI hierarchical model so as to limit the hypothetical cascading impact from the simulation.

11. A computing device comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions stored therein, the instructions being executable by at least one processing core of a processing unit to cause the processing unit to perform a method for serious gaming for interrelated critical infrastructure (CI) resilience improvement, the method including:
generating a CI hierarchical model in memory of a computing platform modeling an interdependent hierarchy of CI elements of a geographic region;
authenticating a multiplicity of different serious gaming participants to access the CI hierarchical model from different computing devices over a data communications network;
receiving from over the data communications network into the computing platform from one of the serious gaming participants, a selection of an anomalous event for the geographic region and a specified change in allocation of at least one resource in a corresponding one of the CI elements;
retrieving from the memory in the computing

Assignees

• Univ Dublin
• Nurogames GmbH

Inventors

• Carroll Páraic James
• Mccrum Daniel Patrick
• Shekhawat Yash

Classifications

• A63F13/57

  Simulating properties, behaviour or motion of objects in the game world, e.g. computing tyre load in a car race game (A63F13/56 takes precedence) · CPC title

• A63F13/822

  Strategy games; Role-playing games (A63F13/825, A63F13/828 take precedence) · CPC title

• G06Q10/04

  Forecasting or optimisation specially adapted for administrative or management purposes, e.g. linear programming or "cutting stock problem" (market predictions or forecasting for commercial activities G06Q30/0202) · CPC title

• A63F13/35

  Details of game servers · CPC title

• G06Q50/265 Primary

  Personal security, identity or safety · CPC title