Special Issue on Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience for Modern Power Systems

Introduct:

Cyber-physical security and resilience have become important topics in modern power systems because digital control, communication networks and physical grid infrastructure are now deeply integrated. As power systems evolve with greater automation, renewable generation, distributed energy resources and data driven operation, they become increasingly exposed to new risks and vulnerabilities, such as cyberattacks, data manipulation, communication failures, extreme weather events and malicious human attacks. Particularly, such cyber and physical coordinated disruptions can escalate into real world consequences. These risks challenge the reliability, stability and safety of electricity supply, which is critical for national infrastructure and social wellbeing. Research in this area aims to understand system risks and vulnerabilities, develop robust detection and mitigation strategies and design resilient strategies and cyber-physical architectures across power transmission, distribution, microgrid and multi-energy systems that can withstand, adapt to and recover from both cyber and physical disturbances.

This special issue aims to bring together leading researchers, engineers and practitioners from academia and industry to address the technical challenges and research gaps in cyber-physical security and resilience. The goal is to safeguard both cyber and physical aspects of the modern power grid and ensure secure and resilient power system operation in an era of growing digitalisation.

Topics of interest for this call for papers include but are not limited to:

• Cyber-physical modelling, simulation and vulnerability assessment for power systems
• Secure and resilient control strategies for power system stability
• Optimisation based defence and recovery methods that support secure and efficient grid operation
• Detection, estimation, mitigation and recovery of cyber and physical attacks in power systems
• Resilient control and intelligent automation for power converter and inverter dominated grids
• Secure monitoring, state estimation and predictive control for power systems
• Resilience enhancement methods for transmission, distribution and microgrid systems
• Protection and control design and implementation in modern power systems
• Secure communication architectures and protocols to support grid operation and automated control
• Risk informed planning and operation that integrates cyber threats, extreme weather events and interdependent energy networks
• Hardware-in-the-loop and real time simulation platforms for validating cyber-physical security solutions

Submission Instructions:

Please read the [Guide for Authors ] before submitting. All articles should be [submit online], please select [Grid-CPES] on submission.

Important Dates:

Submission Deadline: 30 November 2026

Final Manuscript Submission Deadline: 28 February 2027

Published (expected): May 2027

Guest Editors:

• Xin Zhang, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. Email: xin.zhang1@sheffield.ac.uk
• Chenghui Zhang, Shandong University, China. Email: zchui@sdu.edu.cn
• Qinglai Guo, Tsinghua University, China. Email: guoqinglai@tsinghua.edu.cn
• Siqi Bu, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China. Email: siqi.bu@polyu.edu.hk
• George Konstantopoulos, University of Patras, Greece. Email:  g.konstantopoulos@ece.upatras.gr
• Junbo Zhao, Dartmouth College, United States. Email:junbo.zhao@dartmouth.edu
• Yan Li, Penn State University, United States. Email: yql5925@psu.edu
• Jing Qiu, University of Sydney, Australia. Email:jeremy.qiu@sydney.edu.au
• Yajuan Guan, Alborg University, Demark. Email: ygu@energy.aau.dk
• Zhengmao Li, Aalto University, Finland. Email: zhengmao.li@aalto.fi