NEW DG Home project awarded: “RESIST – REsilience Support for critical Infrastructures’ through Standardized Training on CBRN”

SAFE, as Leader of the consortium, has been awarded the project “RESIST – REsilience Support for critical Infrastructures’ through Standardized Training on CBRN”, funded by the EU Commission in the scope of the ISF – Police Action Grant. The project starts officially on 1st November and will last for a total of 24 months, with a budget of approximately 1.1M€.

RESIST project addresses CBRN risks mitigation in the context of the protection of European Critical Infrastructures (such as airports, train stations, hospitals, power plants, ports). The project will contribute to improve the preparedness and fast response of operators and emergency responders in case of a CBRN event which affects a Critical Infrastructure. Focusing on five pilot infrastructures in Italy and five in Romania, RESIST will set-up a dedicated training programme for selected staff of the Operators of infrastructures (targeting altogether 100 people). The training programme will be entirely carried out at the Inter-force School for CBRNe Defense in Rieti (Italy) and this phase will be followed by operational exercises in each of the selected pilot infrastructures.

The combination of RESIST activities will allow the creation of the first 10 European “Critical Infrastructures CBRNe Intervention Groups” – trained and equipped teams able to operate in contaminated environments, liaising with first responders to either maintain the infrastructure operational in a safe manner, or ensuring its controlled shutdown.

RESIST Partnership includes several practitioners from the Italian CBRN Cluster P3 (including SAFE, IAI, ENEA, University of Tor Vergata, Ministry of Defence – Inter-force School for CBRNe Defense, Ministry of Interior – Italian Firefighters, Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Civil Protection Department) and Romania (Romanian cluster PROECO-CBRNE, as well as several end-users in the area of CBRN).

The pilot Critical Infrastructures for Italy will include RFI (in particular, Termini railway Station in Rome), Verona Airport, Ravenna Municipality (focusing on the port of Ravenna as CI), Hospital “Policlinico Gemelli” and ENEA Casaccia Nuclear research power plant. In Romania, the infrastructures will be confirmed in the period November-December 2019.
As final overarching objective, the entire process set-up by RESIST will set the basis for proposal to the European Standardization Office of a voluntary certification at EU level – the CBRNe Resilience Label – for public and private operators of Critical Infrastructures.

On 12th and 13th November all project partners will meet in Soave, VR, Italy for the kick-off of activities. Additional news and action plans will be published thereafter.