Authors: Emily Larsen
Critical systems such as power facilities, manufacturing plants, and data centers depend on stable environmental controls to stay safe and operational. An MME capstone team at Washington State University partnered with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to build a model that helps simulate these environments for cybersecurity exercises.
Jordan Flanders, Trevor Cook, Will Smith, Ryan Mowrey, and Cooper Brown designed a system with two major sections. One side recreates a data center environment where heat is generated and managed using cooling equipment and airflow controls. The other side simulates a manufacturing environment where contaminants can appear and trigger automated responses.
The team moved through several prototype designs before finding an approach that balanced realism, safety, and usability. They replaced difficult-to-manage materials with water vapor and humidity systems, added cooling systems that behaved more like commercial equipment, and included sensors and feedback controls that react to changing conditions.
The final result, completed in less than 4 months, is more than a classroom model. It creates a training environment that behaves like real infrastructure systems, allowing cybersecurity teams to practice identifying failures, analyzing data, and responding to changing conditions before those challenges happen in the real world.
