Water Infrastructure Research Paper
Description the water infrastructure consists of built to pump, divert, transport, store, treat, and deliver safe drinking water. The infrastructure consists of a large number of of groundwater wells, surface-water intakes, dams, reservoirs, storage tanks, drinking-water facilities, pipes, and aqueducts. Briefly I'll give you a quick rundown on how the service is provided.
The groundwater naturally is stored in underground geologic formations, and is pumped from its subterranean source via a single well or multiple wells. Surface water can be accessed via an intake pipe in a river, canal, large lake, or artificial reservoir. In some rivers, low-head dams may be used to pool the water for more efficient withdrawal. In other cases, large …show more content…
Once treated the Water may be stored in underground or above-ground tanks. Storage most commonly is used for two reasons:
(1) to provide adequate contact time for disinfection; and
(2) to provide for peak demand, when customer demand may exceed what the pumping system can supply (e.g., in the morning when most people are showering and preparing breakfast).
The last component is the distribution system that moves the treated water throughout the community. The finished water often is stored in treated water reservoirs until it is needed for residential, industrial, municipal, or agricultural uses.
So now that we have discussed the processes necessary to get the water from the storage facility we can now discuss the IT systems that are required to keep the process going.
* Monitoring systems - which keep track of the water …show more content…
This information could then be sold off to others, to be used in identity theft, having their money stolen or being added to various mailing lists.
Attack on water monitoring systems -
If attackers were able to access the water monitoring systems there is potential for chaos as they could change the values to lower or higher readings, if higher readings were input this could result in a purge of some water to stop the reservoirs from over flowing. Once the monitoring system has been changed it will be hard to know for sure how much water is available to the public.
Attack on water maintenance systems -
Attackers could change information regarding when maintenance is due to take place, what work is to be done and could even pose as the maintenance team and damage the pumps or lines. From this system it is likely that water areas could be marked to be shutdown due to maintenance causing issues for the affected areas.
Attack on the water treatment systems
The groundwater naturally is stored in underground geologic formations, and is pumped from its subterranean source via a single well or multiple wells. Surface water can be accessed via an intake pipe in a river, canal, large lake, or artificial reservoir. In some rivers, low-head dams may be used to pool the water for more efficient withdrawal. In other cases, large …show more content…
Once treated the Water may be stored in underground or above-ground tanks. Storage most commonly is used for two reasons:
(1) to provide adequate contact time for disinfection; and
(2) to provide for peak demand, when customer demand may exceed what the pumping system can supply (e.g., in the morning when most people are showering and preparing breakfast).
The last component is the distribution system that moves the treated water throughout the community. The finished water often is stored in treated water reservoirs until it is needed for residential, industrial, municipal, or agricultural uses.
So now that we have discussed the processes necessary to get the water from the storage facility we can now discuss the IT systems that are required to keep the process going.
* Monitoring systems - which keep track of the water …show more content…
This information could then be sold off to others, to be used in identity theft, having their money stolen or being added to various mailing lists.
Attack on water monitoring systems -
If attackers were able to access the water monitoring systems there is potential for chaos as they could change the values to lower or higher readings, if higher readings were input this could result in a purge of some water to stop the reservoirs from over flowing. Once the monitoring system has been changed it will be hard to know for sure how much water is available to the public.
Attack on water maintenance systems -
Attackers could change information regarding when maintenance is due to take place, what work is to be done and could even pose as the maintenance team and damage the pumps or lines. From this system it is likely that water areas could be marked to be shutdown due to maintenance causing issues for the affected areas.
Attack on the water treatment systems