Water & wastewater | Modelled case study
Recover treatment-system keys during a flood or facility loss
Can an alternate control location authenticate and decrypt essential systems when the primary site is inaccessible?
The modelled organisation
A recognisable problem reaches the operating agenda
This composite scenario follows the Emergency Management · SCADA · Infrastructure functions. It is grounded in the cited problem context but does not identify a real customer.
Operating environment
A water utility operates treatment plants, pumping stations, reservoirs, remote PLC gateways, engineering workstations, telemetry, and vendor maintenance links.
What is at stake
Control and recovery must remain available during facility loss, communications degradation, or supplier intervention without leaving permanent shared access behind.
Situation
Backups may exist but depend on the same facility, directory, network, or key service affected by the disaster.
Event that forces action
Flood exercise, resilience grant, new alternate control room, or recovery audit.
Concrete system boundary
Systems this case study puts in scope
The model is specific about the operational surfaces that must be discovered, changed, or independently checked.
primary treatment site
alternate control location
offline key recovery material
essential control and telemetry services
Modelled case study walkthrough
How this organisation would use QNSI
The walkthrough connects the real-world problem to a bounded QNSI contribution and an independently reviewable result.
Recognise the operating condition
Backups may exist but depend on the same facility, directory, network, or key service affected by the disaster.
Frame the decision the owners must make
Can an alternate control location authenticate and decrypt essential systems when the primary site is inaccessible?
Apply QNSI to the controlled boundary
Use QNSI dependency and key-ownership records to identify recovery prerequisites, offline material, roles, and expiry.
Leave the team with a concrete result
A treatment continuity exercise report showing recovered functions, missing dependencies, custody events, and corrective work.
Prove the result in the organisation's environment
The utility proves secure storage, dual authorization, restoration order, process safety, post-recovery rotation, and reconciliation.
What useful success looks like
A decision artifact plus proof from the real environment
The model stops at a target result. It becomes an actual case study only when a customer produces and independently validates this evidence in production.
Decision artifact
A treatment continuity exercise report showing recovered functions, missing dependencies, custody events, and corrective work.
Independent validation boundary
The utility proves secure storage, dual authorization, restoration order, process safety, post-recovery rotation, and reconciliation.
Real-world problem grounding
Primary sources behind the model
These sources establish the external requirement, failure mode, or risk context used to model this case. They do not endorse HEOSSI or prove that QNSI completed the scenario.
Customer evidence status
This is modelled, not a customer claim
The organisation is a composite and the result is a target state. This page does not prove a deployment, customer outcome, certification, legal conclusion, regulator endorsement, or completed control.