Focus

SECURITY OF INDUSTRIAL INSTALLATIONS

With specific reference to production processes, industrial security may be defined as the set of the studies, development and the applications of strategies, policies and operative plans, finalized to prevent, manage and solve adverse behaviors against people, environment and properties, either within or outside the industrial site, and against company resources, which are essential to ensure competitiveness in short or long period. In this perspective, industrial installations can represent important target for terrorist attacks, sabotages or more in general malevolent actions with high potential of damages, including those related to the symbolic value of this kind of structures from a politic and strategic point of view.
The protection of production sites from adverse acts is of fundamental importance for the managers, the community and more generally for the sustainability of industrial systems. As part of the production activities, the oil industry plays a major role, given the inherent hazard of the substances produced, manipulated or stored, and given the strategic importance of national and international energy system. The study and development of the main security assessment procedures adopted at international level, with specific reference to chemical and oil industry is therefore of primary importance, and has become a specific focus of the activities of the Research Institute on Combustion, in addition to other essential competencies of CNR (cyber-security, CRBN), within the development required by Horizon 2020.

In the framework, Institute for Research on Combustion, with the Department of Engineering, ICT and Technologies for Energy and Transport (DIITET), has realized an extension of the systemic risk assessment procedure originating from malevolent attacks for ENI SpA, starting from the attractiveness, including consequence-based analysis and possible domino effects to the areas surrounding oil & gas installations in Italy. These methodologies will be applied in the future, in collaboration with the University of Bologna, to existing production sites in Italy.