In our hyper-connected world, the movement of people and goods is both an essential part of our daily life and a powerful economic driver. However, as past supply chain interruptions have shown, critical infrastructure such as ports, railroad networks, airports, highways and multimodal platforms are continually exposed to risks. Disruption caused by physical or cyber attacks on such infrastructure can bring about costly and long-lasting damage.
With an aim to address and mitigate these risks, the University of Luxembourg is teaming up with 20 academic, institutional and private partners from 7 countries on a 5-million-euro project funded by a Europe Horizon grant (Cluster 3 - Civil security for society). TRANSCEND or Transport Resilience against Cyber and Non-Cyber Events to prevent Network Disruption, which is set to run for 3 years, seeks to identify and develop ways to protect critical freight transport infrastructure networks across Europe against physical, cyber and hybrid threats. TRANSCEND is coordinated by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) .
Researchers at the Luxembourg Center for Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LCL), including LCL Director Prof. Benny Mantin, will contribute to multiple aspects of the project, including the development of assessment tools, systemic indicators, and risk scenarios to address the weaknesses faced by freight operators and critical infrastructure providers and enhance their resilience. These will be validated via a pilot carried out at the airport in Luxembourg. Two additional test cases have been chosen: a road-rail terminal in Bologna, Italy and a trimodal port in Spain.Analysing each each case, researchers propose improvements to reinforce security and test the recommendations in the live environment. The team will also use the fluvial port of Budapest and the Egnatia motorway in Greece to demonstrate transferability of recommendations.
"Transportation of goods is the backbone of value creation and an inherent component for the livelihoods of our societies as was evident in recent global disruptions," says Prof. Benny Mantin. "We are delighted to be part of the TRANSCEND project that will leverage our past and ongoing activities in this domain, will harness and enhance the collaborations with the various partners, and will deliver a strong and long-lasting template that will ultimately strengthen the resilience of the freight industry and the pertinent critical infrastructure. We are looking forward to making an impact!"
Benny Mantin
Full professor in Supply Chain Management and Logistics, Director of the LCL