Strategy for Awareness and Resilience of CIs
About the solution
The SUNRISE Strategy will enhance Critical Infrastructure (CI) operators’ awareness and resilience against future pandemics and extreme events. The Strategy is a five-step evaluation process based on current risk and resilience management standards. It helps CI operators identify the characteristics of pandemics/extreme events, analyze their impacts on population, critical entities, the economy and society, and assess effective countermeasures.
This framework not only addresses pandemic preparedness but also integrates considerations for climate change and extreme weather events, ensuring a multi-dimensional risk assessment and mitigation analysis.
The SUNRISE strategy consists of five steps:
Identify pandemic-specific critical entities (the people and organisations) that need to be involved in the strategy process, as well as their relations, the dependencies among them and the available data sources. Also identify the current situation, context and conditions under which the strategy process will operate, including organisational, structural and legal aspects.
Identify the pathogen causing the pandemic, its characteristics and how it is spreading, and define its effect on varying possible scenarios and conditions.
Analyse the locations, populations and pandemic-specific critical entities most affected by the pathogen, as well as the pandemic’s potential effects on society and the economy on a regional and national level.
Identify, evaluate and create countermeasures to prevent, protect against or mitigate pandemic effects including protective health measures, non-pharmaceutical interventions, economic measures and enabling legal measures.
Check the effectiveness of the individual measures by considering the consequences of the pandemic according to the different categories defined in step three and integrating the results into a resilience level for one individual organisation or a network or organisations.
Who will benefit?
- European Critical Infrastructure Operators in sectors including: energy, water, transportation, telecommunications & healthcare
- Government agencies at national and regional levels
- International organizations such as the WHO and the UN.
What are the benefits?
- Enhanced preparedness during pandemics and extreme events to ensure operational continuity
- Actionable insights for informed decision making at regional and national levels
- Indirect reduction in CIs’ downtime and financial losses
Use cases tested
The SUNRISE Strategy was validated with CI authorities in Slovenia, Italy and Spain, focusing on climate and disease spread modeling, pandemic-specific risk assessment, and economic impact evaluation.
Testimonial
“Thanks to SUNRISE Strategy for Awareness and Resilience of CIs, we had the availability of a structured process for evaluating the consequences of pandemic risks, as well as for gauging the effectiveness of the possible countermeasures (e.g., non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing).”
– Giuseppe D’Avenio, Senior Researcher, ISS
How to access it?
- The SUNRISE Strategy will be offered for free as a blueprint, and will be available to EU Critical Infrastructure operators, private sector businesses and any other relevant stakeholders.
- Consulting services will be available to stakeholders on how to effectively integrate and implement the strategy in their day-to-day operations.
About the organisation(s) leading the result
- AIT
- HB
- HZI
- ICS
- IHS