Security: In Italy first European center for the critical infrastructure protection

The first center in Europe for the security of strategic infrastructures is born today in our country, thanks to the agreement signed in Rome by the President of ENEA Federico Testa and the President of the INGV Carlo Doglioni. Called EISAC Italy (European Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Centre), it‘s the first of four centers to be set in the European Union^[1] to support infrastructure operators and the Public Administration to provide continuity to essential services such as electricity and water supply, communications and transport in case of blackouts, terrorist actions, cyber attacks and extreme weather events.

The new structure will work with the Civil Protection, local administrations and managers of critical networks providing advanced services of natural events simulation and their impact on services, stress tests of infrastructures and data collection and analysis as well.

"We are proud of the fact that, thanks to today's agreement, the first of five critical infrastructure safety centers in Europe is born in our country", the President of ENEA Federico Testa pointed out. "It’s a multidisciplinary laboratory where the scientific and technological expertise of our two research institutions and the national industry will converge, with the aim of forecasting and tackling crisis scenarios of critical infrastructures", Testa continued.

"The INGV participates in this important initiative through the study of natural risks and extreme events in particular", the President of the INGV President Carlo Doglioni said. "The seismic, volcanic and tsunami danger is too often underestimated and, especially as concerns strategic infrastructures, specific precautionary prevention criteria should be adopted", Doglioni said.

EISAC Italia will also provide territorial databases, infrastructure simulators, satellite data analysis and weather, climate and ocean forecasting systems to improve the resilience of critical infrastructures, ie their ability to withstand extreme events and quickly return to normal operating conditions.

"Critical infrastructures are highly connected and vulnerable transnational systems. Blackouts at the national level can spread and cause cascading damage to other essential services and to other nations, " Italy EISAIC coordinator Vittorio Rosato, head of the ENEA Critical Infrastructure Analysis and Protection Laboratory explained. "Today's agreement also represents the outcome of an extensive work carried out by ENEA and INGV for ten years with other European research institutions, including the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, the CEA in France and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research. in the Netherlands ", concludes Rosato.

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[1] The other four centers will be built in Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands respectively.