Home // CYBER 2021, The Sixth International Conference on Cyber-Technologies and Cyber-Systems // View article
Authors:
Vaughn Standley
Roxanne Everetts
Keywords: catastrophe theory; military; power law; risk analysis
Abstract:
Rigorous assessment of disaster risk requires an exceedance probability function relating the probability that ‘S’, a random variable representing the severity of the disaster, exceeds some threshold ‘s’ above which destruction is expected. Calculating a valid exceedance probability function for disasters is not straightforward. The Power Law has served as a panacea for this difficulty, often erroneously. Here, an alternative approach is demonstrated using empirical data for interstate war, the coronavirus pandemic, and identity theft. The method relates the frequency distribution of severity S (deaths or failures per state) to the product of frequency distributions for vulnerability V (deaths or failures per case or combatant), exposure E (cases or combatants per capita), and population P (population per state). The probability density function for S, from which the exceedance probability function is derived, may then be computed using obtainable distributions for V, E, and P if data for S is not directly available. The method is used to estimate the risk of a global cyber disaster. Results suggest that the probability density functions for this situation follow log-gamma distributions. The fits can be used in stochastic decision formulae enabling authorities to optimally choose among alternative cyber preparedness or resilience measures to minimize overall risk.
Pages: 7 to 12
Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2021
Publication date: October 3, 2021
Published in: conference
ISSN: 2519-8599
ISBN: 978-1-61208-893-8
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Dates: from October 3, 2021 to October 7, 2021