Environments for security assessment and enhancement

Increased requirements for reliability and utilization of existing power systems create a need for a large library of tools to aid operating personnel in solving their tasks. To take advantage of the expanding number of tools, the user-interface must provide the power that the user needs to control their execution and examine their input and the results produced. In order to get adequate response times and effectively control the complex tasks involved, a distributed problem-solving approach seems appropriate. The paper reports the implementation of an expert system for security assessment (CQR) in a distributed problem solving environment (FORS). CQR, initially an integrated program of expert system and numeric procedures, was split up into smaller independent modules written in C and OPS83, called tools, integrated in FORS. FORS supports distributed processing and has an icon-based interface that makes it relatively easy to manipulate data and tools. A compact description of FORS and CQR is followed by a report on the experience gained from the implementation. Shortcomings and suggested extensions to CQR and FORS are discussed in connection with an evaluation of the distributed CQR version. By combining the added functionality offered by expert systems with a distributed problem-solving environment, security assessment techniques transcending those presently used become feasible. Some suggestions are made as to what type of techniques these might be, and it is argued that such aids are sure to have an impact on the way dispatchers and planners will perform security assessment in the future.