Wed, 2015-04-15

Wed, 2015-04-15

Mon, 2015-03-30

Content

Full agenda including sessions of the ERNCIP Conference with direct links to the each presentation.

Mon, 2015-03-30

Content

Full agenda for the special session focused on “Decision Support Tools for Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP)”.

Mon, 2015-03-09

Abstract

Strengthening chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) security in the European Union (EU) reduces the threat of and damage from CBRNE incidents. One of the main issues facing the EU security industry is its highly fragmented nature, exhibiting a lack of standardisation and of harmonised certification procedures. The need for standardised information sharing between competent authorities and international bodies regarding radiation measurements and data analysis has been recognised by several experts in response to Commission mandate M/487 for the establishment of European security standards. This report will suggest a way forward to develop protocols for more efficient cooperation between competent authorities and remote expert support or reachback centres at the national and international level. Not all EU Member States have the capabilities to process data provided by nuclear security instruments, and thus should consider instigating a coordinated capability yielding a more efficient and comprehensive approach in responding to future nuclear emergencies. This could be achieved by reachback centres across Europe (built upon existing national facilities and expertise) and would provide analysis services for alarm adjudication. Efficient data sharing and processing across EU Member States requires the use of standard data formats and protocols.

Mon, 2015-03-09

Abstract

ERNCIP’s thematic area ‘Chemical and biological risks in the water sector’ deals with the security of drinking water supply.

One priority of the thematic area group is early warning systems (EWS), which aims at protecting against the intake of drinking water from treatment plants and drinking water networks affected by malicious or harmful events. Ideally, these systems trigger an alarm as soon as the quality of the source water or the drinking water differs from normality and, hence, allow the operator to supervise it and react properly, if necessary. A second priority deals with the analytical identification of ‘unknown’ chemical and/or biological contaminations in drinking water following an incident. This rather analytical topic deals with screening methods used for the purpose of identifying and quantifying the individual contaminants rapidly as a basis for risk/crisis/mitigation management. Corresponding state-of-the-art reports were also elaborated.

Wed, 2015-01-14

Abstract

Microbiological water contaminants represent an acute health risk in drinking water. There are a wide variety of bacteria and viruses that can potentially be found in drinking water resulting from either an attack or a natural contamination incident. Whatever the origin of the contamination, rapid identification is needed to ensure water quality and subsequent citizen safety. Currently, various detection and identification methods exist, but they are mostly time-consuming and unsuited to emergent harmful micro-organisms. New developments are occurring to deal with this concern.
In this desk study, the main basic technologies to identify pathogens (such as immunological and genetic methods as well as mass spectrometry, microarrays and physical approaches) are reported, as well as their applications in the drinking water area. Then, some promising technologies under development are presented, especially integrated tools or new concepts in mass spectrometry. However, bottlenecks still exist, such as sample preparation or live and dead pathogen discrimination. Additionally, different projects founded by the European Commission are briefly reported in this study, as they allow a clear vision of the scientific teams and networks working on this concern.
Finally, European standards are being established as well as national initiatives that currently remain unofficial.

Mon, 2015-02-09

Abstract

All studies recently published agree. Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) increasingly constitutes a target for cyber-attacks aiming at disturbing Member States’ economies, at disabling our critical infrastructures or at taking advantage from our people. Such hostile acts take place in a context of geostrategic tensions, for the satisfaction of organised crime’s purposes, or else in support of possible activist causes. In this context, the ERNCIP Thematic Group (TG) “Case studies for the cybersecurity of Industrial Automation & Control Systems” was started in January 2014 to answer the question: “Do European critical infrastructure operators need to get IACS’ components or subsystems tested and “certified” (T&C) with regards to their cybersecurity?” And should the answer have been yes, it had to answer a corollary question: “What are (roughly) the conditions of feasibility for implementing successfully a European IACS components cybersecurity Compliance & Certification Scheme?” This TG’s undertaking was a research project, not a task force seeking to deliver an immediately applicable standard. It mobilised representatives of IACS vendors, industrial operators, European Institutions and national cybersecurity authorities.

Wed, 2015-01-14

Abstract

Recent developments of digital data acquisition systems allow real-time pre-processing of detector signals at a high count rate. These so-called pulse processing digitizers are powerful and versatile instruments offering techniques which are important for nuclear security, critical infrastructure protection, nuclear physics and radiation metrology. Certain aspects of digital data acquisition affect the performance of the total system in a critical way and therefore require special attention. This report presents a short introduction to digital data acquisition, followed by a discussion of the critical parameters which affect the performance in the lab and in the field. For some of the parameters, tests are proposed to assess the performance of digital data acquisition systems. Good practices are offered to guide the selection and evaluation of digital data acquisition systems. More general performance criteria which are not specifically related to digital data acquisition systems are discussed separately.

Tue, 2014-12-30