Protecting Power Transmission Systems against Intelligent Physical Attacks: A Critical Systematic Review

Power systems are exposed to various physical threats due to extreme events, technical failures, human errors, and deliberate damage. Physical threats are among the most destructive factors to endanger the power systems security by intelligently targeting power systems components, such as Transmission Lines (TLs), to damage/destroy the facilities or disrupt the power systems operation. The aim of physical attacks in disrupting power systems can be power systems instability, load interruptions, unserved energy costs, repair/displacement costs, and even cascading failures and blackouts. Due to dispersing in large geographical areas, power transmission systems are more exposed to physical threats. Power systems operators, as the system defenders, protect power systems in different stages of a physical attack by minimizing the impacts of such destructive attacks. In this regard, many studies have been conducted in the literature. In this paper, an overview of the previous research studies related to power systems protection against physical attacks is conducted. This paper also outlines the main characteristics, such as physical attack adverse impacts, defending actions, optimization methods, understudied systems, uncertainty considerations, expansion planning, and cascading failures. Furthermore, this paper gives some key findings and recommendations to identify the research gap in the literature.