The ZDH-ZERT audit took place on February 7-8, 2019 and showed again that the Steinbeis Advanced Risk Technology Group and EU-VRi duly improves and complies with the requirements of ISO 9001 Quality Management. The audit has covered the areas of integrated risk management and industrial safety with multidisciplinary, global and holistic approach, including education and training, information providing, innovation, professional services and consulting, products and software, project management.

This standard is currently under development by ISO/TC (Technical Committee) 262 ‘Risk Management,’ which "develops international standards in the field of risk management to support organizations in all their activities including making decisions to manage and minimize the effects of accidents, disasters and faults in technical systems as well as response and recovery from major disruptive risks."

To learn more about the new ISO 31050 standard, visit: https://committee.iso.org/sites/tc262/home/projects/ongoing/iso-31022-guidelines-for-impl-2.html

Invitation for the Joint Final Conference
of the SmartResilience and SAYSO H2020 projects

April 15-17, 2019

Budapest, Hungary

The joint final conference of the SAYSO and SmartResilience projects will be hosted by the National University of Public Service in Budapest on April 15-17, 2019. The objectives of the joint conference are to present and discuss their respective outcomes as well as to discuss next steps! The conference will involve practitioners, developers, technology suppliers, standardisation and procurement specialists, as well as decision-makers to find the best ways to harmonise, integrate, and enhance the projects’ outcomes and achieve tangible impact at the European level.

If you wish to participate as a speaker, please contact us before January 31, 2019, at SAYSO-SmartResilience-Conference@eu-vri.eu.

The e-registration for all participants will open early 2019.

To be among the first informed, follow us on Twitter!

@SmartResilience and @SAYSO

Contributors and participants from other projects and institutions are welcome to attend.

We look forward to welcoming you in Budapest!

Kind regards,

A. Jovanovic & H. Burkow

on behalf of the SmartResilience and SAYSO Consortia

These events include:

December 2-6, 2018:

Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (USA) – Professor Jovanović will be sharing the following presentation related to SmartResilience:

Analyzing Interdependencies Among Infrastructures Based on Big Data and Resilience Indicators (Jovanovic AS, Klimek P)

December 4, 2018:

Second Project SAYSO Public Workshop, Brussels, Belgium

December 5-6, 2018:

Security Research Event (SRE) 2018, Brussels, Belgium

As stated on its website, WaterBriefing is "an information service, delivering daily news, company data and product information straight to the desks of purchasers, users and specifiers of equipment and services in the UK water and wastewater industry." The article describes SmartResilience's series of real-life based case studies, such as the FOXTROT case study focused on assessing the resilience of drinking water supply in Swedish cities.

The delegates from the Beijing Academy of Science and Technology participated in a meeting with Steinbeis Advanced Risk Technologies (R-Tech) and the European Institute for Integrated Risk Management (EU-VRi) in Stuttgart, Germany on August 16, 2018. They discussed possible projects in the area of emerging risks, risk management and resilience. During the meeting they officially signed the future framework collaboration agreement between Steinbeis, EU-VRi and BJAST.

Around 40 participants from all over the world (China, USA, France, etc.) gathered together in the premises of Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam. During the 1-day workshop, the most tangible results of the work done in the project were presented. Project partners higlighted the specific issues tackled by their case studies, showing the indicators which they have selected for the assessment as well as their contribution to the integrated network/tool developed within SmartResilience. Furthermore, application of SR Tool on other EU DRS project has been presented by dr Emanuelle Bellini, coordinator of RESOLUTE.  

In the second part of the meeting, Frederic Petit from Argonne National Laboratory presented the need to promote a global approach to resilience.

At the end, the Chair of Critical Infrastructure Resilience Advisory Board, Prof. Claudio Rolandi, and coordinator of the project, Prof. Aleksandar Jovanović led a fruitful panel discussion about the challenges related to resilience management, perspectives on enterprise resilience, and engagement of relevant politicians. 

ResiStand’s partners worked with these communities to identify standardisation gaps and to create a prioritised roadmap for new initiatives. The roadmap was complemented by a critical evaluation of standards as a tool to improve disaster resilience. Additionally, ResiStand implemented a pre-standardisation process that supports the development of standards.

The overall objective of ResiStand was to identify new ways to improve the crisis management and disaster resilience capabilities of the European Union and of individual Member States through standards. This objective was achieved by:

• Proposing new standardisation activities that can advance and improve disaster resilience.
• Providing a better understanding of the potential of standardisation as a tool for improving disaster resilience.
• Presenting a new, sustainable process for better and faster capitalizing on the potential of standardisation.

Early 2018, the European Virtual Institute for Integrated Risk Management (EU-VRi)  and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the aim of strengthening their collaboration in the field of resilience of critical infrastructures.

Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by the University of Chicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy.

This new collaboration aims to develop the mechanisms and processes to promote research, academic exchange and cooperation for the mutual goal of improving safety, security and sustainability aspects of resilience of critical infrastructures. This exchange of information will include resilience related indicators, assessment methods, tools, auditing for the improvement of protection of critical infrastructures.

SAF€RA has launched its fourth joint call for transnational, collaborative research projects. The call aims to foster collaboration between researchers from different countries in Europe and from different scientific disciplines, in order to improve safety and the management of technological risks.

The call topics are:

• T1: New technologies and the effects of major changes in industry
• T2: Measuring and monitoring safety performance

Funding available

The total available budget for the 2018 call is approx. 1.6 M€. Two forms of funding are available:

• research grants for researchers from universities, institutes, research organizations and public firms;
• person-months for personnel from certain participating institutes and research organizations.

Most projects funded within this call will include 2 to 4 partners, for a duration between 12 and 36 months and funding between 20 and 150 k€ per project partner. The call aims to fund mainly applied research carried out in universities or research institutes, though contributions from industry are also eligible. Interdisciplinary research is encouraged. Cooperation and joint activities between different consortia funded within the call will be encouraged.

Call timeline

The 2018 joint call will use a two-stage application process with a pre-proposal mechanisms for the first stage. The calendar of the various stages is shown below.

Call documentation

The following documents are available:

• The Guidelines for proposers contains a description of the topics covered by the 2018 joint call, information on the participating funding organizations and the budgets available, and other important information for researchers wishing to submit a proposal.
• The Guidelines for evaluators are written for the experts who will evaluate the projects, but will be useful to researchers who wish to understand the evaluation criteria.
• The pre-proposal form is available in Microsoft Word (.doc) or OpenOffice/LibreOffice (.odt) formats.
• Templates for the SAF€RA progress reports, which must be sent to the SAF€RA Call Secretariat by the project coordinator on behalf of the project consortium. The mid-term reporting template should be submitted halfway through your project, assuming the project has a duration greater than 18 months. A final administrative report should be sent by all projects, within three months of the end of the project. (This report is distinct from the final scientific report which most projects will be producing as one of their deliverables.)

A web-based matchmaking facility is available to help researchers wishing to submit projects as a consortium to find partners.

Contact information

For general queries concerning the 2018 joint call, please email the call secretariat at call-secretariat@safera.eu. Make sure you read the call documents above and check the list of frequently asked questions first.

If you have questions concerning the eligibility criteria of specific funding organizations, please check the contact information provided in the Guidelines for proposers document, which can be downloaded above.

For more information, please visit the call website at www.call.safera.eu.

Resilience Workshop organized by DRS-7&14 Projects (Darwin, Improver, Resilens, Resolute, SmartResilience, SMR) in conjunction with CoU meeting had been finished. More than 140 participants gathered during 2-day Resilience Workshop discussed the following items:

Session 1: Towards the aligned European Resilience Management Guidelines: How to achieve alignment and interoperability?

Session 2: Resilience assessment method and indicators: How to define them? How to monitor them? How to implement them?

Session 3: Tools & methods for resilience operationalization

Session 4: Application cases – are the newly developed methods, guidelines & tools implemented/analyzed? 

Session 5: Importance of international/global cooperation in the area of resilience – How to enhance it in the future?

Session 6: Alignment of the Resilience Workshop findings/items with IMG-S - EARTO WG Security Research approach

Furthermore, in the Interactive Space audience had an opportunity to become familiar with projects' outcomes and dissemination materials. Also, thanks to presence of Nexus Perspectivity Challenge Game, experts had a chance to be put in the shoes of key decision makers. 

The most important findings of the workshop agreed among projects coordinators have been summarized and can be found here. 

In order to download the book of abstracts please click on the picture below.

Below are uploaded presentation slides as .pdf files for sessions held during the Resilience Workshop. The content, style or layout of the slides should not be changed without the permission of the authors.

Session 1: Towards the aligned European Resilience Management Guidelines: How to achieve alignment and interoperability?
1) J.M. Sarriegi: European Resilience Management Guideline (SMR)
2) S. Jacobzone: Achieving Resilience: sharing best practice, value and limit of guidelines (OECD) - not yet available
3) D. Lange: Integration of risk and resilience management (IMPROVER) - not yet available
4) W. Hynes: European Resilience Management Guidelines (ERMG) for the operators and owners of Critical Infrastructure (CI) (RESILENS)
5) M. Branlat: Practical interventions to support critical infrastructures in enhancing their resilience (DARWIN) - not yet available
6) E. Gaitanidou: European Resilience Managment Guidelines and their adaptation for UTS (RESOLUTE) - not yet available

Session 2: Resilience assessment method and indicators: How to define them? How to monitor them? How to implement them?

1) R. Almeida: Assessing resilience based on the ISO/IEC 33000 standard series (IMPROVER)
2) A. Jovanovic & L. Bodsberg: Which indicators can tell us if critical infrastructure is resilient? How do we know the ‘’quality of indicators?’’ (SmartResilience)
3) J.M. Sarieggi: Indicators for assessing the resilience-building process in cities (SMR)
4) D. Verner, F. Petit: Assessing Resilience: from Facilities to Regions (ANL)
5) E. Bellini: Exploiting SmartResilience indicators in RESOLUTE Resilience Assessment Framework (RESOLUTE)  

Session 3: Tools & methods for resilience operationalization

1) G. Rafaeli: The RESILENS Toolkit – Decision Support for CI operators and owners (RESILENS)
2) R. Almeida: A web tool for assessing resilience using any framework (IMPROVER) - tool presented online: http://improver-inov.herokuapp.com/users/sign_in
3) P. Nesi, A.Drosou: Evidence-driven Collaborative Resilience Assessment and Management Support System for Urban Transport System, A VA Platform for Personalized Crowd, Fleet & Resources Management (RESOLUTE)
4) U. Barzelay: Why and how to use Interactive data visualization in resilience related projects? (SmartResilience)
5) C. Grimes: Overview of the resilience tools developed and their intersections (SMR) - not yet available
6) I. Kozine: Capabilities-based approach to building and maintaining resilience

Session 4: Application cases – are the newly developed methods, guidelines & tools implemented/analyzed?

1) A. Corrigan: The RESILENS Pilot Demonstrations – Testing the Toolkit across three CI Sectors in Ireland, Portugal and Germany (RESILENS) 
2) E. Bellini: Florence pilot case (City of Florence) (RESOLUTE)
3) Z. Szekely, I. Macsári: Case study DELTA and the significance of the SmartResilience project for the aviation security sector (SmartResilience) - will be published later
4) V. Latinos: Local Resilience Planning: A review of methodologies adopted for the SMR pilot implementation process (SMR)
5) P. Berggren: DARWIN - Pilot application in Sweden involving among others health care, public sector and transport services (DARWIN)

Session 5: Importance of international/global cooperation in the area of resilience – How to enhance it in the future?
1) W. McNamara: US DHS views on critical infrastructure resilience - not yet available
2) S. Jacobzone: Application of resilience concepts: the case of critical infrastructure - not yet available
3) I. Linkov: Resilience: State of Science and State of Applications in the USA
4) F. Petit, D. Verner: Resilience Indicators and Interdependencies: Need to Promote a Global Approach
5) C. Grimes: The role of local and regional networks and partnerships in resilience-building (SMR) - not yet available
6) J. Kieran: Enhancing International Collaboration through DARWIN’s Community of Practitioners (DARWIN) & movie (click here)

Session 6: Alignment of the Resilience Workshop findings/items with IMG-S - EARTO WG Security Research approach

1) C. Fuggini: Joint Position Paper on Resilience in Security Research

The 5^th SAF€RA Symposium will take place in Bilbao, Spain, on May 18-19, 2017. It is to present and discuss results from the first two SAF€RA joint calls, give an insight to research needs in industrial safety, and provide details of the 3^rd SAF€RA joint call.

The draft programme is available here and the key information can be found hereunder:

• Registration

Registration in the SAF€RA Final Conference has to be made before April 21, 2017:

http://safera-symposium.evenium.net

The registration is free of charge. Only the dinner on May 18 and the lunch on May 19 will be at your own cost.

• Call for abstract

Presentations dedicated to scientific topics and with wish to open new collaborations are encouraged.

If you intend to make a presentation, please submit your abstract at the following link https://goo.gl/forms/nTbpYTxMdo4ACGGm1

Deadline to submit an abstract: April 7, 2017.

• Proposed accommodation

HOTEL MIRÓ * * * *  -  160 m from IBERDROLA Tower

http://www.mirohotelbilbao.com/

HOTEL NH VILLA DE BILBAO * * * *  - 700 m to the IBERDROLA Tower

https://www.nh-collection.com/es/hotel/nh-collection-villa-de-bilbao

HOTEL NH DEUSTO * * * - 650 m from IBERDROLA  Tower (8 min)

https://www.nh-hoteles.es/hotel/nh-bilbao-deusto

HOTEL Ercilla **** , 15 min walking to the Iberdrola Tower

http://www.hotelercilla.com/

• Contact

Ms. Maria Nieves de la Peña
Osalan - Instituto Vasco de Seguridad e Higiene Laborales
Camino de la Dinamita, s/n
48903 Barakaldo (Spain)
T: +34944032145 / E: osalantpr16ba@euskadi.eus

• Programme Committee

Olivier Salvi, EU-VRi, Germany, Symposium Chair

Maria Nieves de la Peña, OSALAN, Spain, Symposium Co-Chair

Carita Aschan, FIOH, Finland

Eric Marsden, FonCSI; France

Kai Holtappels, BAM, Germany

• About SAF€RA:

SAF€RA originated as an ERA-NET project entitled 'Coordination of European Research on Industrial Safety towards Smart and Sustainable Growth' that was funded for three years by the European Commission in the 7th Framework Programme (Grant agreement no: 291812). Under the ERA-NET scheme it identified areas of joint interest and expected synergies of collaborative research, and stimulated transnational research on industrial safety.

SAF€RA brings dynamism into European research on industrial safety where it cannot be tackled at the national level. SAF€RA will continue in context of the European Technology Platform on Industrial Safety, ETPIS, which initiated the original SAF€RA project.

Former Chairman: Jürgen Lexow, juergen.lexow@bam.de

Vice-Chairman: Olivier Salvi, salvi@eu-vri.eu

SAF€RA homepage: http://www.safera.industrialsafety-tp.org/

Call Homepage: http://call.safera.eu/

ERA-NET scheme: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/coordination/about-era_en.html

European Technology Platform on Industrial Safety (ETPIS): http://www.industrialsafety-tp.org/

Special Issue: societal safety, critical infrastructure reliability and related intersectoral governance

Societal safety refers to the consolidation of society’s robust “normal” functioning and includes the prevention and absence of major disruptions within and across key sectors. When failures occur, societal safety incorporates the ability to respond to and cope with external or internal stresses, such as natural hazards, terrorism and major industrial accidents. Critical infrastructures are the lifelines of modern societies and their reliability is essential for societal safety. Sectors, organizations and populations are organized around the expectation that infrastructures function, typically with near 100 per cent reliability. Their success—their usefulness and high reliability —produces societal vulnerability and challenges in terms of governance, as dependence on them is engrained in the fabric of society.  Joint and coordinated efforts from different disciplines are required to maintain societal safety in general and critical infrastructure reliability in particular as both the vulnerabilities and the resources for resilience straddle organizational, sectoral, jurisdictional and national boundaries.

This Special Issue invites studies that advance our understanding of societal safety and our capability for preventive and responsive action. We seek to elaborate societal safety around two particular foci: as societal issues (matters concerning policy and regulation) and as operational issues (the operation and emergency management in infrastructure sectors along with their other key functions) and, importantly, how the two foci are intertwined. At least two important trends challenge both:

1) Neoliberal forms of governance have led to more fragmented organizations while sectors of society have become more tightly coupled.

2) Digitalization has introduced new, often intractable, interdependencies and couplings, increasing complexity and the potential for domino- or cascade effects. It opens up new vulnerabilities related to intentional and accidental events but also new means for risk monitoring and coordination in emergencies.

While the dependency on highly reliable critical infrastructures and digital technologies may invite models of societal safety based on strict rules and regulation, the last decades of safety and reliability theory has increasingly been concerned with how system variability is handled in dynamic ways and how situational adaptations and adjustments can be resources for resilience. Our Special Issue specifically encourages reflection on the boundaries of this adaptability, the managing of adaptability, and its regulation.

The special issue invites papers discussing societal safety as operational and societal issues. We are particularly, but not exclusively, interested in papers discussing the inter-organizational/inter-sectoral management of societal safety, case studies of critical infrastructures and organizations/agencies responsible for societal safety, resilience based perspectives on societal safety, perspectives on the management on the societal interconnectedness of risk and on the relationship between safety and security. We are also interested in theoretical and empirical contributions addressing the implications of digitalization and neoliberal governance (New Public Management, managerialism, public-private partnerships etc) for these topics. 

Submission Method

The length of submitted papers will be between 7,000 and 10,000 words. Submitted papers must be unpublished and not currently under review by other journals. Papers using previously published conference papers should not exceed 20% similarity.

All Full length papers should be submitted via the Safety Science submission system. While submitting a paper to the special issue, please choose the article type “Societal Safety” otherwise your submission will be handled as a regular manuscript. All submissions will go through the journal’s standard peer review process. Criteria for acceptance include originality, contribution, scientific merit and relevance to the theme of the Special Issue. For author guidelines, please visit the website of the journal at http://www.journals.elsevier.com/safety-science

Deadlines:

Submissions of full papers are due via Safety Science’s submission portal on February 1, 2017. Papers must be in accordance with the ordinary format requirements of Safety Science.

We also invite interested authors to submit abstracts or extended abstracts (by email, max 1000 words) to the editors by October 15, 2016. This is not mandatory for full paper submission.

Managing guest editor:

Dr. Emery Roe, Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, University of California, Berkeley, US, emery.roe@berkeley.edu

Guest editors:

Dr. Petter G. Almklov, NTNU Social Research, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway, pettera@svt.ntnu.no

Kristine V. Størkersen, NTNU Social Research, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway, kristine.vedal.storkersen@apertura.ntnu.no

Dr. Stian Antonsen, Department of Safety Research, SINTEF Technology and Society, Norway, Stian.Antonsen@sintef.no

 European SME week
“Helping Europe’s entrepreneurs reach new heights”
-
How do SMEs benefit from standards?

Within a fortnight we will be celebrating the European SME week! A great opportunity to promote how standards help SMEs to do better business. This year’s theme is “Helping Europe’s entrepreneurs reach new heights”. CEN and CENELEC together with SBS (Small Business Standards) would like to showcase how standards can help SMEs to reach new heights.

Are you an SME, take this opportunity to promote your business! Send a quote (max. 100 words) and share why you use standards and/or why you are involved in standardization. Maybe you contributed to the development of a particular standard? Tell all about it! Your activities will be promoted through social media and on website to kick-start the SME week on 21 November.

Need inspiration for a quote? Maybe these tips will help:

1: There are many benefits that SMEs can gain from using standards. Knowing which standards to use, and how to apply them in the correct way, is vital for the success of your business.
Why do you use standards?  (e.g. to ensure quality/safety of products/services, compatibility between product/components, market access, meet legislation, ...)
Which standards are relevant to your company?

2: It is also important to understand how standards are made, and how SMEs can contribute to the standardization process.
Why did you get involved in European standardization?
What did you get out of this involvement? ?  (e.g.  networking, advance knowledge of new technologies and innovation, ...)

3: SMEs face specific challenges (problems, obstacles…) to participate in standardization (e.g. they often don’t have the time or resources to get as involved as they would wish)
What challenges if any did you meet?
How do you think the standards organizations (or anyone else) can help?

4: And, don’t forget to present yourself and your company (name, company name and main activity, number of employees). If you could add a picture, that would be nice too  

CEN, CENELEC and SBS are looking forward to receiving your quotes by November 16 at SME-NEWS@LISTSERV.CENCENELEC.EU.

Unless explicitly mentioned, CEN/CENELEC and SBS understand that they have agreement to publish and share the quotes/pictures received.

In the occasion of the "40 years anniversary of the disaster of Seveso*", The European Commission would like to invite you to the conference Resilience and Technological Risk: comparative experiences after the 40 years of disaster of Seveso to analyse in-depth the effectiveness of the adoption of the European Directives and by local governments and debate how “resilience actions” have been lasting uninterrupted for forty years. 

Experts of the European Commission and EU regional authorities will discuss how risk management and prevention have been improved thanks to the synergy between Institutional and socio-economics regional and local structures as well as the new perspectives: ranging from environmental restoration, scientific research and safety regulations. 

Confirmation to the participation is required by June 20th, 2016 to silvia.dognini@flanet.org (specifing surname, first name, date of birth, type and number of document, organization). 

*The accident of Seveso (July 1976) marked the start of a series of “resilience actions” which has been lasting uninterrupted for forty years thanks to an active participation of the civil society. 

Informations:

40°  Anniversary after Seveso: 
Resilience and Technological Risk: comparative experiences 40 years after the disaster in Seveso 
29/06 at Committee of the Regions 
Bâtiment Jacques Delors, Rue Belliard 99-101 - Bruxelles 
Room JDE53 (5th floor of the JDE building) 

R-Tech is going to take a leading role in the project by developing the Nano-Risk for the identification and monitoring of nanotechnology emerging risks. In addition, R-Tech will consolidate the caLIBRAte Nano-Risk Governance framework by developing the System of Systems (SoS) platforms. The framework models will be linked to the 10 steps of the ERMF framework developed within the iNTeg-Risk project and support the Cooper-style stage gate innovation model as a special interface for different stakeholders.