EU Funded SUNRISE Project to Strengthen Critical Infrastructure Resilience Against Pandemics and Other Risks

SUNRISE: Improving Europe’s Critical Infrastructure Resilience Against Major Risks

(IN BRIEF) The EU has launched the SUNRISE project, which aims to improve the resilience of critical infrastructures in Europe, including transport, energy, water, and healthcare, against the impact of pandemics and other major risks. The project, which is set to run from October 2022 to September 2025, has been awarded €10m in funding and will be coordinated by Spanish-based global cloud and digital service company, ATOS IT Solutions and Services Iberia SL. The project will develop a suite of novel technologies and solutions to improve the resilience of these critical infrastructures and will be piloted in real-world conditions across Europe.

(PRESS RELEASE) MADRID / DUBLIN, 23-Jan-2023 — /EuropaWire/ — As Europe continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU is looking to futureproof society’s critical infrastructure. The EU-funded SUNRISE project (SUNRISE stands for Strategies and Technologies for United and Resilient Critical Infrastructures and Vital Services in Pandemic-Stricken Europe) aims to ensure greater availability, reliability, and continuity of critical infrastructures in Europe including transport, energy, water, and healthcare.

Coordinated by the Spanish arm of global cloud and digital service company, ATOS IT Solutions and Services Iberia SL, the SUNRISE project has been awarded €10m in funding by the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program. The SUNRISE consortium includes 18 public and private critical infrastructure (CI) operators and authorities.

The project’s main objectives include facilitating active collaboration among CIs within and across European borders, identifying pandemic-specific vital services and CIs in Europe and their interactions and dependencies, developing a comprehensive strategy and a set of mature technologies for CI resilience and business continuity in a pandemic, piloting the new strategy and technologies in real-world conditions across Europe, and enhancing knowledge, awareness, and capacities for unity and resilience in Europe.

The SUNRISE project will develop several new solutions, including a system to facilitate collaboration, cooperation, and unity among public and private CI operators and competent authorities across different critical sectors and across entire Europe, a solution to understand interdependencies between the CIs and the associated risks and cascading effects among them, a system to minimize the exposure of essential workers with a risk-based access control to critical facilities, a better forecast and management system for rapidly changing demands for vital resources (physical, digital, and human), and a solution to increase cyber-physical resilience to ensure a reliable, robust, and continuous operation of digital services.

The SUNRISE project is set to run from October 2022 to September 2025 and will significantly increase the resilience of CIs, improve safety, wellbeing, and trust of citizens, and support the move towards climate-friendly operations across Europe.

Media contacts:

Laura Daly
EU Project Manager
Carr Communications
ldaly@carrcommunications.ie

SOURCE: SUNRISE