• The Fundación Valenciaport, La Fe Hospital, Aena and the Valencia Provincial Fire Brigade Consortium, in collaboration with the Valencia Port Authority, organised this demonstration to test the four tools developed within the framework of the project.
• The pilot consisted of a simulation of a combined terrorist attack (physical and cyber) on the Port of Valencia facilities.

Valencia, 5 July 2023. – Tools for detecting physical, cybernetic or combined threats; tools for predicting possible consequences and cascading effects on critical infrastructures after an attack, as well as tools for coordinating responses and warning the population and first responders, are some of the innovative technologies that have been tested this morning in an emergency situation in the Port of Valencia. The Clock Building and the adjacent esplanade hosted a demonstration of the PRAETORIAN project, an initiative that aims to increase the security and resilience of European critical infrastructures, facilitating coordinated protection against all types of threats.

The aim of this event, which has been organised by the Fundación Valenciaport, the Hospital La Fe, Aena and the Provincial Consortium of Firefighters of Valencia, with the collaboration of the Port Authority of Valencia (APV), was to show and validate in the port area the use of the four tools developed within the framework of the project by the partners Thales, Universitat Politècnica de València, ETRA, Austrian Institute of Technology and ICCS.

The pilot consisted of a simulation of a combined terrorist attack (physical and cyber) on the facilities of the Port of Valencia in which the technologies developed were put to the test. A series of suspicious events, including the sighting of an unauthorised drone flying over the critical port infrastructure of Valencia, alarmed the emergency teams about the possible cascading effects of these threats. At the same time, a cyber-attack on the port’s CCTV system and access control was detected and an explosion in a suspicious vehicle was simulated. In response to these events, the different emergency teams were quickly coordinated thanks to the notifications made by the tools developed by PRAETORIAN. Alerts have been sent from the port to other critical infrastructures that could be affected by the chain of events following the terrorist attack, such as the collapse of La Fe hospital, caused by a large wave of injured people, or the influence that the attack could have on the airspace of Manises airport through the use of drones.

Thanks to this exercise, the technologies developed during the project have been validated with the aim of having real-time information to facilitate decision-making.

The PRAETORIAN project is an initiative co-funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 programme, with an amount of more than 9 million euros for its development and which began in June 2021.

The PRAETORIAN consortium is formed by 23 partners from 7 European countries (Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Croatia and Greece): Électricité de France S.A.; ETRA Investigación y Desarrollo S.A.; Universidad Politécnica de Valencia; AENA S. M.E. S.A.; KONČAR – Inženjering za energetiku i transport d.d.; Fundación Valenciaport; Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.; Institute of Communications and Computer Systems; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; Međunarodna zračna luka Zagreb d. d.; Thales France; IDEMIA Identity & Security Germany AG; Hrvatska elektroprivreda d.d.; Hrvatska gorska služba spašavanjae; Austrian Institute of Technology; Consorcio Provincial de Bomberos de Valencia; Fundación para la investigación del Hospital Universitario La Fe de la Comunidad Valenciana; The Lyon fire department; RiniGARD; Medical University Graz; SubCMarine; Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux and Klagenfurt Hospital.