SUNRISE CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SERIES
In an era marked by unprecedented challenges (from public health crises to natural disasters), the EU-funded SUNRISE project has designed, developed and validated in real operational scenarios five innovative solutions designed to enhance the resilience of Critical Infrastructures (CIs) across Europe. These solutions address key vulnerabilities and equip the CI operators with the tools needed to ensure continuity and security of essential public services during crises such as pandemics, natural disasters, and cyber-attacks. Let us have a look at the solutions offered by the project, along with their benefits.
- Strategy for Awareness and Resilience of CIs
Problem Solved: The COVID-19 pandemic revealed significant gaps in pandemic preparedness and response among CI operators.
Solution: The SUNRISE Strategy for Awareness and Resilience provides a blueprint to help CI operators prepare for and respond to pandemics and other relevant crises. This strategy includes identifying pandemic characteristics, analyzing potential consequences, and assessing countermeasures to ensure operational continuity. It is validated with CI authorities in Slovenia, Italy, and Spain, focusing on climate and disease spread modeling, pandemic-specific risk assessment, and economic impact evaluation.
Benefits:
- Enhanced preparedness during pandemics and extreme events
- Actionable insights for informed decision-making
- Reduction in downtime and financial losses
- RiBAC Solution (Risk-Based Access Control)
Problem Solved: Managing secure access during dynamic situations, such as pandemics, is challenging.
Solution: The RiBAC solution offers a scalable, privacy-focused access control system that adapts to changing risk levels. It includes an IDM server, a mobile app for authentication, and various hardware accessory readers. Enhanced with pandemic-specific functionalities, RiBAC ensures secure access based on dynamic factors like body temperature and vaccination status. It is tested in health, digital, and transport sectors in Italy, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, ensuring secure and efficient access control.
Benefits:
- Swift adaptation to changing access control needs
- Operational continuity with minimal disruptions
- Cost-effective access management
- DPM Solution (Demand Prediction and Management)
Problem Solved: Accurate demand prediction and resource management during crises are vital for CI operators.
Solution: The DPM solution utilizes AI/ML models to predict resource needs in water, energy, transportation, and healthcare sectors. It analyses historical and real-time data, helping optimize resource allocation and prevent service disruptions. DPM is piloted in health, energy, water, and transport sectors in Spain, Italy, Slovenia, and Serbia, to train a model that optimizes resource management during crises.
Benefits:
- Improved demand forecasting during crises
- Enhanced resource allocation and operational efficiency leading to cost savings
- CPR Solution (Cyber-Physical Resilience)
Problem Solved: Increasing cyber threats to interconnected digital and physical systems.
Solution: The CPR solution integrates four modules—Anomaly Detection, Cybersecurity Risk Assessment, Threat Intelligence Management, and Incident Response Management—to provide a cybersecurity suite. This solution helps CI operators detect and respond to threats, ensuring the resilience of critical services. It is implemented in health, digital, energy, transport, and water sectors in Italy and Slovenia, enhancing cybersecurity resilience.
Benefits:
- Proactive cyber threat detection and response
- Compliance with EU cybersecurity regulations (e.g., NIS2 Directive, Cybersecurity Act)
- RII Solution (Remote Infrastructure Inspection)
Problem Solved: Manual inspections are labor-intensive, costly, and hazardous, especially during pandemics.
Solution: The RII solution combines satellite imagery, UAV sensor inputs, and AI algorithms for remote infrastructure inspection. This approach ensures better coverage and timely detection of anomalies, enhancing overall infrastructure resilience. RII is deployed in energy, transport, and water sectors in Italy, Slovenia, and Spain, enabling remote infrastructure inspections.
Benefits:
- Cost-effective and more frequent inspections
- Reduced human exposure to hazards, improved safety of inspections
- Timely detection of infrastructure issues
We adopt an integrated approach for enhanced resilience
Together, these solutions address the full spectrum of challenges faced by CI operators, facilitating that critical services remain operational even in the most demanding situations. The SUNRISE technologies form a connection via the Strategy for Awareness and Resilience, which acts as the central blueprint. This strategy sets the foundation and guidelines that the other four solutions follow independently. RiBAC handles secure access control during crises, DPM manages resource prediction and allocation, CPR protects against cyber threats, and RII enables remote infrastructure monitoring.
While these four solutions operate independently in their specific domains, they all align with and implement the principles and requirements laid out in the Strategy for Awareness and Resilience. Think of it like spokes on a wheel – the strategy is the hub, and each solution extends from it to address a specific aspect of Critical Infrastructure protection, but they don’t necessarily need to interact with each other to be effective.
The SUNRISE solutions could be available to end-users via various commercial models like direct sales, consulting services and software licensing. CI operators interested in implementing these solutions can contact the respective solution representatives for more information and support:
- For the SUNRISE Strategy: Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)
- For the RiBAC: Institut Mikroelektronických Aplkiací s.r.o. (IMA)
- For the DPM: Squaredev BV
- For the CPR: ATOS
- For the RII: XLAB an ATOS
Written by: Konstantinos Chisiridis, Netcompany-Intrasoft (INT)
