Smart indicators to measure the resilience of important social services
A new EU project – Smart resilience indicators for smart critical infrastructures – will develop indicators to measure resilience, meaning how susceptible vital public services such as transportation, health care, industry and drinking water supply are to interference.
This interference may be due to climate change, terrorist threats or because the current IT systems infrastructure is much more highly integrated, says project manager Johan M. Sanne at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. The project will develop methods that will enable policymakers to identify, visualize and evaluate resilience – allowing them take the steps necessary to secure the drinking water supply. – Among other things, we will examine new vulnerabilities and interdependencies that can arise when the infrastructure is made "smarter", for example through an increased use of IT. What will the impact on infrastructure resilience be? asks Johan M. Sanne. The project is interdisciplinary, and linked to previous projects at IVL that have dealt with water and climate adaptation issues. IVL will be responsible for analysing drinking-water supply indicators and for assessing the end-user need of these indicators. To bring complementary expertise into the project IVL has commissioned research from DRICKS, the framework programme for drinking water research at Chalmers Institute of Technology. Swedish stakeholders include the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, the Swedish Water Authorities and the Swedish National Food Agency. The project has a budget of 5 million euros from the EU framework programme Horizon 2020. IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute is Swedish research partner. The project will start in May 2016 and will run for four years. For more information, please contact: Johan M Sanne