Ebook: Physical and Cyber Safety in Critical Water Infrastructure

The NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Physical and Cyber Safety in Critical Water Infrastructure, held from 8–11 October 2018, was a great success. More than 50 scientists, experts, and technology and service providers from 19 countries came together to increase awareness of the risks that threaten current and future water utilities and services, share experiences from leading utility managers and specialists, and learn how to increase surveillance and preparedness, as well as minimize crisis should all else fail.

The workshop contributed to development of the knowledge base on cyber and other threats to water supply and wastewater management, increasing awareness of risks and opportunities for key stakeholders alike. It established and strengthened the network of experts and decision makers from 19 countries, forging partnerships between NATO member and partner countries. This collaboration resulted in three concepts for joint research projects that will be developed into project applications during 2019–2020. The workshop produced a printed collection of presentations and opened two opportunities for peer-reviewed publications aimed at the relevant government authorities and membership organisations for water utilities, promoting and strengthening relevant policies.

This book presents 12 papers selected from those delivered at the NATO ARW workshop.

We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to the Secretariat of the Emerging security challenges division (ESC) of the NATO Science for Peace & Security Programme (SPS), which provided finance for the workshop. We would also like to express our gratitude to the authors for developing valuable manuscripts which provide an insight into the subject, and the participants for their active role during the workshop. We hope that both the workshop and this collection of papers will increase awareness of the urgent need to focus on physical and cyber safety in one of the most critical infrastructures in our society – the water supply and water management services.

Prof. Harsha Ratnaweera and Prof. Oleksandr Pivovarov

Co-directors of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Physical and Cyber Safety in Critical Water Infrastructure, NATO ref G5495

July 2019

In response to a drinking water catastrophe which ended up with seven deaths and illness of one-half of the population of a community in Canada, namely Walkerton, major changes have been imposed to adjust from a reactive to a pro-active strategy to ensure against such circumstances from re-occurring. The regulations now require source water protection planning to be in place. As well, regulations are being upgraded to also require planning for water treatment and distribution, monitoring and alarm systems to be implemented to prevent such occurrences in the future.

The paper deals with problems of water infrastructure management in the conditions of growing physical danger and cyber-threats. Countries with the largest water potential in the world which would be able to replace the markets of oil and gas by water-intensive technologies and require significant infrastructure projects in the future are identified. The author of study derived and described in the paper the pattern of “water problem globality principle” in the regional development. The emphasis is placed on the existence of the physical, cybernetic and human risk factors in water infrastructure management. It is suggested to take the American system of management of water infrastructure security as a reference.

It is reported the impact of biofilms on the quality of tap water inside of water networks. The analysis covers the factors determining the occurrence and growth of biofilms on the inner surface of water pipes. The composition of biofilms upon the age and their influence on the degree of bio-contamination of tap water at the consumption points are considered. The threats for water consumers, associated with the appearance and multiplication of pathogenic microbes in the biofilms matter have described. The special attention has devoted the action, which along with the native processes of water pollution inside of distribution systems, could lead the strong artificial contamination of tap water by pathogens when somebody makes it with a malicious aim. Because of this, the additional purification and sterilisation of tap water are necessary before using. Current and prospective water purification devices designed for solving this task has described in comparison of each – other.

The lack of rapid, reliable and accurate monitoring methods of water quality is a problem impeding rapid detection of any incidents caused by physical or cybersecurity issues as well as natural catastrophes and accidents. Therefore, we want to present a novel approach for the automatic flow analysis applicable in environmental monitoring – the direct-injection detectors (DIDs). They are integrated with a system of solenoid pulse micropumps. The sample and appropriate reagents are injected by the micropumps directly into the detection chamber in counter-current mode. It allows for fast measurement of the analytical signal from the moment of reagents mixing. In studies, the emphasis was put on developing new methodological and instrumental solutions for achieving better validation parameters compared to flow methods described in literature thus far. The aim was for the systems developed to be integrated, small and highly automated. Another important aspect was the simplicity and reliability of the designed systems, so as to facilitate their future commercialization. Flow systems developed in this manner, along with the detection methodology, allow for precise and accurate determination while minimizing the amount of reagents and energy used as well as shortening the analysis time.

Climate change results, natural hazards in the region of Gdańsk (northern Poland). Zulawy region and Gdansk itself for ages suffered from flood which came from different directions. Inundation of big areas created a lot of losses in infrastructure and agriculture. That’s why it was necessary to develop flood protection to secure inhabitants, industry and agriculture. Heavy rainfall which is more frequent now caused the construction of artificial reservoirs and monitoring system. Numerical modelling of the Gdansk catchment made possible to simulate different scenarios in order to take necessary action to prevent inundation. As to Zulawy region, there is a Programme for Zulawy to 2030 aiming not only to improve flood threat identification, flood control and flood risk management but also reconstruction and construction of water engineering facilities.

The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant confirmed the fact that the process of restraining of sometimes non-peaceful atom has not stopped up to this day. Nuclear power and uranium mining industries are inevitably accompanied by solid and liquid radioactive wastes. The liquid radioactive waste is particularly hazardous for humans, therefore, new scientific knowledge and modern technologies of waste management, neutralization and disposal in view of the unique experience of the ChNPP accident are relevant for all operating nuclear power plants and industries of the nuclear cycle in all countries of the world, including Ukraine.

In Germany, both the water supply and the sanitation and sewerage systems sector belong to the so-called critical infrastructures. Physical security in these sectors is ensured by several measures, while for cybersecurity, an industry-specific security standard was developed in 2017 that has to be applied by all large utilities. The implementation of this standard is described, and first experiences demonstrate that it is an appropriate tool for creating awareness and increasing cyber security in the water and wastewater sectors. Furthermore, the approaches and procedures chosen in other European countries are briefly exemplified.

Water is important for human wellbeing and water security guaranties socioeconomic development of countries. More than 42% of the world’s total active workforce are heavily water-dependent. Nearly half of the global population are already living in potential water scarce areas at least one month per year and this could increase to some 4.8–5.7 billion in 2050. The water sector in emerging economies is fragmented, witnessing ageing and inadequate infrastructure, and influenced by corruption. Water Critical Infrastructure Preparedness takes a new meaning of building flexible and multipurpose infrastructure,able to face hydrologic uncertainties, climate change challenges and rising water demands. However, building or converting critical water infrastructure to multipurpose, meeting all the challenges of preparedness, is going to place a new financial burden.

The problems of drinking water safety are relevant for Ukraine for many years, and their acuity not only does not decrease but even increases in recent years. As a result of the hostilities in the Donbass, a critical situation has arisen with the drinking water provision for the population because of the pump stations that supply water from the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal damaged and also there are partial destructions of filtering stations after shelling. For most of the water supply sources of Donbass (surface water, wells, artesian wells, mine waters), the significant exceedance of turbidity, color, TDS, hardness, nitrates, heavy metals, organic substances, and microbiological contaminants are characteristic. To solve the problem of population providing with safe and high-quality drinking water at facilities with missing or damaged centralized water supply, proposed using of special mobile drinking water purification systems, mounted on the basis of standard transport 3, 20 and 40-foot Ecosoft KFPMOUF series containers with productivity from 4 to 500 m³/hour. In cases where centralized water supply is present, but there are doubts about the quality of tap water, it is proposed to use reverse osmosis systems that connect to the water source and ensure the absolute safety of the purified water.

The most probable crisis situations for Ukrainian water utilities are identified. Two, the most probable crisis scenarios are analysed and the risk of the entry of toxic substances at different stages of water treatment is considered. A number of recommendations for water utilities are formulated.

In this chapter, some study cases related to water pollution during the natural disasters of the most important rivers located in the proximity of the Romanian-Hungarian border, are presented. In order to prevent the negative environmental impact of natural catastrophe or man-made disasters (accidents, physical or cyber attacks) an Early Warning System (EWS) based on the automatic monitoring network of the river water, distributed in the most strategic points along the rivers catchments, was developed. The advantages of such low cost automated mobile on-line Water Monitoring System should be pointed out in order to promote their implementation, especially in the trans-boundary area where the short term and long-term changes in water quality indicators are very useful for the surface water management and for planning the suitable measures to prevent the damages. Starting from the previous Hungarian experience in the automatic monitoring stations implementation in the frame of some projects, a complex, but user friendly, automated mobile on-line water quality monitoring system, was designed to provide real time information on both natural and anthropogenic pollution and to assure better water management.

Water supply and sanitation infrastructures are essential for our welfare, but vulnerable to several attack types – facilitated by the ever-changing landscapes of the digital world. A cyber-attack on critical infrastructures could for example evolve along these threat vectors: chemical/biological contamination, physical or communications disruption between the network and the supervisory SCADA. Although conceptual and technological solutions to security and resilience are available, further work is required to bring them together in a risk management framework, strengthen the capacities of water utilities to systematically protect their systems, determine gaps in security technologies and improve risk management approaches. In particular, robust adaptable/flexible solutions for prevention, detection and mitigation of consequences in case of failure due to physical and cyber threats, their combination and cascading effects (from attacks to other critical infrastructure, i.e. energy) are still missing. There is (i) an urgent need to efficiently tackle cyber-physical security threats, (ii) an existing risk management gap in utilities’ practices and (iii) an un-tapped technology market potential for strategic, tactical and operational protection solutions for water infrastructure: how the H2020 STOP-IT project aims to bridge these gaps is presented in this paper.