18th January 2023
SUNRISE National Workshop Series: Spain
The third and final installment in the first round of SUNRISE national workshops took place in the Telefónica Headquarters in Madrid, Spain on the 24th November, 2022. Hosted by project partner and leader of the project’s Spanish cluster of Critical Infrastructure (CI) operators, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), we spoke to Prof. Jose M. del Alamo, Associate Professor at the university who offered an insight into the first workshop of the Spanish cluster which kicked off what will become valuable input into the project’s results.
First and foremost, the key purpose of this workshop was to develop an understanding of the participants’ experiences and best practices regarding critical infrastructure resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants included some of Spain’s leading organisations who operate the country’s critical infrastructure and vital services including transport, telecommunications, water and health. To be precise, all of the participants who attended hold management positions in the following areas: Infrastructure operation (4 participants), Health & Safety (1), Infrastructure supervision (2), Human resources (2), Research and development (2), Security (2), and Business continuity management (2). This variety in the cluster members and workshop participants highlights the expertise that is going into SUNRISE by bringing those who will eventually use its resulting tools and strategies into their creation.
The key findings that workshop hosts, UPM aimed to conclude the main ‘pain points’ the participants suffered and the best practices they implemented as CI operators in response to one of history’s most poignant pandemics. Europe is at a pivotal time in its response to Covid-19 as society learns to live with its existence and move forward while learning from its impacts.
The pandemic provoked a disruption in the normal operation of many infrastructures, partially due to unpredicted, changing consuming patterns. Our aim is to support critical infrastructures in better predicting the demand change so that they are prepared to tackle it under different situations.
– Prof. Jose M. del Alamo, Associate Professor, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)
Some of the key issues identified by the workshop participants included:
- Lack of Anticipation: this was generally shared by all participants, although with slight differences depending on the domain and company dimension.
- Remote Teleworking; this was identified as an issue participants had to deal with from the very beginning of the pandemic, and which still requires attention.
- Other issues were related to broken supply chains, lack of stable protocols and messages, uncertainty, and human resources management in this context.
The issues and best practices identified in the workshop will be further analysed and synthesized to provide inputs for the project’s different stakeholders. For example, there were interesting suggestions made by participants that they agreed should be considered by policymakers in relation to critical infrastructure protection and overall crisis preparedness. Also, the most commonly mentioned best practices will be systematized and introduced into the overall SUNRISE strategy for responding and managing future pandemics. Finally, some gaps in CI resilience were also detected that the project’s results will aim to meet.
Find out more about the results of the SUNRISE national workshops and how they are used in the project’s tools and strategies on our website as they develop further.
Image: Unsplash
