EMILI · Emergency Management in Large Infrastructures

The project EMILI (“Emergency Management in Large Infrastructures”) is a capability project which aims at a new generation of data management and control systems for large Infrastructures (CIs) including appropriate simulation and training capabilities. This new generation of control systems is needed in order to improve the security of large Infrastructures like power grids and telecommunication systems, airports and railway systems, oil and gas pipelines under future technical, economic, organisational, political, and legal conditions. This is especially important in the case of emergencies and crises. Large Infrastructures are cost intensive, large, complex technical systems. They are frequently operated at their limits. Today, they are changing their characteristics rapidly in various respects. These CIs depend on each other and interact with each other in many ways. Even small disturbances may trigger avalanches of failures – in the same system and in depending ones. Quick and adequate reactions are key factors in safe and efficient operations of Critical Infrastructures today. Currently used data management and control systems of large Infrastructures mainly collect data from their own system and process them in a more or less pre-defined way. In order to adapt today’s control systems to the new challenges - especially to an efficient management of emergencies - we need a new generation of these control systems, their methodology and technology.