The first center in Europe for the safety of strategic infrastructures was born today in our country, thanks to the agreement signed in Rome by the presidents of the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) Federico Testa and of National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) Carlo Doglioni. Called EISAC Italia (European Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Centre), it is the first of four other centers that will be set up in the European Union to support infrastructure operators and the Public Administration to give continuity to essential services such as the distribution of electricity and water, communications and transport, in the event of blackouts, terrorist actions, cyber attacks and extreme weather events. The new facility will work with the Civil Protection, local administrations and critical network operators by offering advanced simulation services of natural events and their impacts on services, infrastructure stress tests as well as data collection and analysis.
"We are proud that thanks to today's agreement, the first of five centers for the safety of critical infrastructures in Europe will be born in our country", underlines the president of ENEA Federico Testa. "It is a multidisciplinary laboratory where the scientific and technological skills of our two research institutions and national industry will converge with the aim of predicting and dealing with critical infrastructure crisis scenarios in the best possible way", adds Testa. “INGV participates in this important initiative through the study of natural risks and in particular of extreme events”, explains the president of INGV Carlo Doglioni. “The seismic, volcanic and tsunami hazards are too often underestimated and, particularly for strategic infrastructures, it is instead necessary to adopt particularly precautionary prevention criteria”, adds Doglioni. EISAC Italia will also provide territorial databases, infrastructure simulators, satellite data analysis and weather-climate and oceanographic forecasting systems to improve the resilience of critical infrastructures, i.e. their ability to withstand extreme events and quickly return to normal operating conditions. “Critical infrastructures are highly connected and vulnerable transnational systems. Blackouts at a national level can spread and cause 'cascading' damage to other essential services and in other countries”, explains the coordinator of EISAC Italy Vittorio Rosato, head of the Analysis and Protection Laboratory of ENEA's critical infrastructures. “Today's agreement also represents the realization of a long work that ENEA and INGV have been carrying out for ten years with other European research institutions, including the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives ( CEA) in France and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research in Holland”, concludes Rosato.
From left: the president of ENEA Federico Testa and the president of INGV Carlo Doglioni.