Several dynamic trends are increasing the complexity in today’s operational environment and posing direct challenges to next-generation nuclear security. These trends include the increasing pace of change in the threat domain (e.g., use of unmanned aerial systems or social engineering), impact of socio-technical interactions (e.g., replacing human with artificial intelligence), the increasingly frequent changes in operational environments, and proliferation of digitization. Taken together, these trends challenge both the efficacy and effectiveness of the current security paradigm for high consequence facilities. Current research at Sandia National Laboratories hypothesizes a new multi-layered network model for nuclear security—a multidomain system visualized as multiple, interacting layers—to describe performance as emergent behaviors from complex system interactions rather than traditional, highly linear security models. The research argues there is a need to re-examine core analytical assumptions and develop a new paradigm to keep pace with the interdependencies, dynamics, and n th -order effects present in today’s more complex operational environment for nuclear security. Despite a strong history, current methodologies simplify or ignore complex interactions and interdependencies observed in real physical security systems. In response, this research focuses on better understanding—including identifying, measuring, analyzing, and designing—these interactions to enable next generation nuclear security to better address these challenging trends. After describing several trends that challenge current nuclear security approaches, this paper will introduce useful insights from complex system theory, resilience science, and network theory to organize the interdependencies observed in nuclear security. Next, this paper will discuss how a series of qualitative, semi-structured interviews—as well as several small focus groups—were conducted with nuclear and other high consequence security, risk analysis, cyber resiliency, infrastructure resiliency, and complex systems modelling experts from Sandia to identify such interdependencies. This paper will then present the results of these discussions, both in terms of useful conceptual conclusions and identified interdependencies to support model-building. Lastly, this paper will introduce a preliminary multi-layered, complex system model for nuclear security. <i>SAND2020-1203A. SNL is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525</i>
Year
2020
Abstract