Engineering Commons^™

Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (Scada) Systems, George H. Baker, Allan Berg

George H Baker

Our critical national infrastructure systems have become almost universally dependent upon computer-based control systems technically referred to as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. SCADA systems evolved from the telemetry and event-alarm systems developed in the early days of utilities. With the widespread use of SCADA systems, computers have become the "basis element" for much of our critical infrastructure. Thus, the disruption of controlling computer terminals and networks due to natural disasters, electric power failure, accidents or malicious activity can have catastrophic consequences.