  Cyber-Physical Systems are the result of integrating information and
communication technologies into physical systems. One particular case are
Cyber-Physical Power Systems (CPPS), which use communication technologies to
perform real-time monitoring and operation. These kinds of systems have become
more complex, impacting on the systems' characteristics, such as their
reliability. In addition, it is already known that in terms of the reliability
of Cyber-Physical Power Distribution Systems (CPPDS), the failures of the
communication network are just as relevant as the electrical network failures.
However, some of the operators' performances, such as response time and
decision quality, during CPPDS contingencies have not been investigated yet. In
this paper, we introduce a model to the operator response time, present a
Sequential Monte Carlo Simulation methodology that incorporates the response
time in CPPDS reliability indices estimation, and evaluate the impact of the
operator response time in reliability indices. Our method is tested on a CPPDS
using different values for the average response time of operators. The results
show that the response time of the operators affects the reliability indices
that are related to the durations of the failure, indicating that a fast
decision directly contributes to the system performance. We conclude that the
improvement of CPPDS reliability is not only dependent on the electric and
communication components, but also dependent on operators' performance.
