The main goal of EU-CIP is to establish a novel pan European knowledge network for Resilient Infrastructures, which will enable policy makers to shape and produce data-driven evidence-based policies, while boosting the innovation capacity of Critical Infrastructures (CI) operators, authorities, and innovators (including SMEs).

In this direction, the partners have already established the European Cluster for Securing Critical infrastructures (ECSCI), which brings together 22 projects that collaborate in CI Resilience.

EU-CIP will leverage the capacity, organization, community, and achievements of the ECSCI cluster towards establishing an EU-wide knowledge network with advanced analytical and innovation support capabilities.

Innovation and policy development for Resilient Infrastructures and Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) is a complex, multi-disciplinary process that must involve different stakeholders (e.g., CI operators and authorities, innovators, technology providers, policy makers) and must analyse a very rich set of data and information from different sources (e.g., research outcomes, state of the art technologies, policies and standards). To ensure the effectiveness of the policy making and the innovation development processes there is a need for reducing information fragmentation, ensuring the continuous and structured analysis of the state of the art, and boosting evidence-based policy making in the scope of a vibrant ecosystem that engages all relevant stakeholders.

Nowadays, European policy makers and innovators that focus on critical infrastructures security and resilience are faced with the following challenges:

• Monitoring and analysing research outcomes, security technologies, policies and standards towards evidence-based policy making.
• Infrastructures’ heterogeneity across different sectors
• Engaging the required diverse stakeholders at EU scale
• Boosting the competitiveness of innovators and providing commercialization opportunities

The main goal of EU-CIP is to establish a unique pan European knowledge network for Resilient Infrastructures, which will enable policy makers to shape and produce data-driven evidence-based policies, while boosting the innovation capacity and competitiveness of CI operators, authorities, researchers, and innovators. In this direction, the project will evolve the ECSCI cluster that is established and operated by the project partners, to Europe’s most prominent Research and Innovation (R&I) knowledge network in security and resilience of critical infrastructures.

EU-CIP will offer advanced information analysis capabilities for evidence-based policy making and innovation support services for exploiting and commercializing research outcomes.
To maximize the impact of its activities, EU-CIP will establish and grow a vibrant ecosystem of interested and committed stakeholders around the project’s information analysis and innovation support services.

OBJECTIVE 1 – EU-CIP ANALYSIS
ENHANCE EUROPE’S ANALYTICAL CAPABILITY REGARDING RESEARCH OUTCOMES, TECHNOLOGIES, AND POLICIES – FOSTER DATA-DRIVEN EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY AND INNOVATION DEVELOPMENT

Establish a data collection, information monitoring and analysis methodology and infrastructure, which will continually collect, analyse, curate, extract and present information and insights about resilient infrastructures. As part of this objective, the project will also design and establish advanced analytical capabilities that will extract foresight and insights about gaps in current knowledge and solutions, technologies that can addresses these gaps, as well as research outcomes and practices that can be employed.

The specific coordination and support (CS) measures to be employed are:

• Continuous Desk Research
• Internal Consultation with Relevant Stakeholders
• External Consultation with Relevant Stakeholders – Advisory Boards
• Open Calls for Engagement in Consultation and Findings Validation
• FAIR Data Observatory of research outcomes, technologies, policies, and standards
• Value-Added Reports, White Papers and other Knowledge Assets
• Data Driven Policy Recommendations

OBJECTIVE 2 – EU-CIP AMPLIFY
MAXIMIZE THE IMPACT OF R&I CIP/CIR ACTIVITIES IN EUROPE THROUGH INNOVATION SUPPORT AND SOLUTION VALIDATION SERVICES

Provide a set of innovation support and solution validation services for research outcomes and innovative solutions in the areas of resilient infrastructures (CIP/CIR). In this direction, the project will leverage the analytical outcomes of the EU-CIP-ANALYSIS pillar to identify gaps in existing solutions and resilient infrastructures’ areas with significant innovation potential. Accordingly, EU-CIP will provide a range of innovation support services (including solution validation services) that will support CIP/CIR innovators (including SMEs) in their exploitation and commercialization activities. Moreover, the project will offer a virtualized testbed for the experimentation with standards based CIP/CIR solutions and certification schemes, along with relevant validation & evaluation processes with stakeholders’ engagement.

The specific coordination and support (CS) measures to be employed are:

• Innovation Opportunities and Gaps Analysis
• Training and Mentoring
• Business Support
• Marketing Support
• Technical Support
• Catalogue of Best Practices and Success Stories
• Co-creation Services
• Standards Solutions and Certification Schemes validation as a Service
• Validation of Innovation Management and Solutions Validation/Certification services through Open Calls

OBJECTIVE 3 – EU-CIP ECOSYSTEM
ESTABLISH A KNOWLEDGE-HUB AND CREATE A VIBRANT ECOSYSTEM OF INTERESTED AND COMMITTED STAKEHOLDERS AROUND THE PROJECT’S RESULTS

Establish and grow an EU-wide ecosystem of CIP/CIR stakeholders covering EU-27 and other countries of the EEA. The ecosystem will facilitate stakeholders’ access to the knowledge, results, services, and infrastructures of the previous objectives, as well as their engagement with innovation development and policy making outcomes of EU initiatives (e.g., research projects, technology initiatives, policy making initiatives). At the heart of the ecosystem will be a Knowledge-Hub, which will centralize access to the project’s knowledge assets, including the infrastructures and results developed in previous objectives. The Knowledge-Hub will be supported by a proper digital infrastructure and will provide a single access point to the project’s results. It will boost knowledge sharing and collaboration between the various stakeholders.

The specific coordination and support (CS) measures to be employed are:

• Knowledge Hub
• Organization of Meetings, Workshops and Conferences
• Engagement of Open Call Participants

In-line with the project’s objectives, the main results of the project are summarized

• R1 – Methodology for Continuous Desk Research, Analysis and Foresight (OBJ1), including Reference Framework and Indicators’ framework: COIN based methodology for analysis of policies, standards and research outcomes; The methodology will be driven by a CIP reference framework and an indicators’ framework.
• R2 – FAIR Observatory of Research Results, Standards and Policies (OBJ1): Structured and searchable repository of standards, policies and research results, based on FAIR data.
• R3 – >=10 Sectorial Studies (Whitepapers) (OBJ1): Analysis reports (whitepapers) covering specific sectors.
• R4 – >12 Added-Value Reports, including >=6 periodic reports asked for by the call (OBJ1): Periodic reports on policies, research and standards, including identification of gaps and opportunities.
• R5 – Consultations and Feedback from Advisory Boards (OBJ1): Analysis of feedback from End-Users Advisory Board (EUAB) and CIP-Experts Advisory Board (CEAB)
• R6 – Innovation Management Services supporting CIP/CIR Innovators (incl. SMEs) (OBJ2): Business, Marketing, Technical, Training and Mentoring services for CIP/CIR innovators
• R7 – Virtualized Lab for Standards Based Solutions and Certification Schemes (OBJ2): Virtualized Lab offering Co-creation and validation services for standards-based solutions and certification schemes
• R8 – CIP Knowledge Hub integrating all the knowledge assets of the projects (OBJ3): Dynamic portal infrastructure providing a single point of access to all the project’s results.
• R9 – Consolidated CIP Stakeholders’ Community (>=1000 members) (OBJ3): Community of profiled/approved stakeholders registered in the Knowledge Hub and engaged with the project’s results.
• R10 – Training Services (incl. >=5 courses) (OBJ2): Pool of courses to support different stakeholders

The overall impact of the project will be reflected on: (i) Increased resilience of CIs; (ii) Increased competitiveness, market opportunities and innovation capacity for CIP/CIR solution providers; and (iii) More effective evidence-based policy development processes. The realization of these impacts will be based on the following pathway:

• Bootstrapping the project’s developments and producing the results (Results R1-R10) (M1-M18)
• Validating the results and demonstrating the expected outcomes (M18-M36)
• Demonstrating and Scaling Up the Project’s Impact (M24-M60)