The complexity of airports and their dependency on electrical energy and information and communication technology (ICT) is rising. Consequently, they are becoming increasingly exposed to blackouts or cyber-attacks. Current approaches to tackle this issue do not take into account the interconnection between the airport infrastructure and airport processes. A novel approach has been developed within this work, treating the airport as a complex cyber-physical system (CPS) represented as a multiplex network graph representing the electrical and ICT infrastructure. By introducing process layers and connecting them to the CPS-layers, the airport was described as a socio-technical system. Models for the interaction between these layers have been described and combined with common approaches to evaluate the behavior of power grids or the propagation of malware through ICT networks. These models have been implemented as an integral simulation framework and verified using minimum examples. The resource availabilities resulting from the simulation on infrastructure level are being used to simulate airport processes in two ways: as a flow-based approach neglecting passenger behavior, and as a microscopic agent-based simulation. By combining these simulations, a holistic pipeline has been developed that allows for the evaluation of emergency plans for blackouts and cyber attacks (e.g., load shedding or network isolation) using classical key performance indicators (KPIs) used to describe airport performance. Apart from the innovative methodological approach, the following key findings have been obtained from a comprehensive risk analysis. While blackouts in first-world countries are often caused by construction and maintenance works, airports in countries with a high occurrence rate and duration of blackouts suffer under large-area blackouts and insufficient emergency power supply. The stress centrality of the nodes within an ICT network graph has been found to be a good indicator for cost-efficient strengthening of vulnerable points. With respect to the impact on airport processes, the analysis in this work has shown that dysfunctional security checks induce a bottleneck effect and therefore result in the highest impact on airport performance. Despite the lack of validation on a real-world infrastructure and real scenarios, a novel approach to increase the resilience of airports has been introduced within this work by expressing them as a holistic system combining the airport infrastructure, airport processes, and passenger behavior.     «

The complexity of airports and their dependency on electrical energy and information and communication technology (ICT) is rising. Consequently, they are becoming increasingly exposed to blackouts or cyber-attacks. Current approaches to tackle this issue do not take into account the interconnection between the airport infrastructure and airport processes. A novel approach has been developed within this work, treating the airport as a complex cyber-physical system (CPS) represented as a multiplex...     »