Detta projekt syftar till vidareutveckling av en uppfinning som har potential att väsentligen förenkla och effektivisera ett arbetsmoment, att lyfta av och på utåtgående sidohängda fönster, som är ett välkänt arbetsmiljöproblem. Resultatet från undersökningen visar att verktyget har utvecklingsmöjligheter och att radikalt minskar de ergonomiska problemen och att användningen kan ge goda möjligheter att effektivisera arbetet. Verktyget måste betraktas som ett lyftredskap och omfattas av därför av ett regelverk som innebär att vissa kriterier måste uppfyllas. Undersökningar i detta projekt visar att verktyget uppfyller de formella krav som ställs på det. Undersökningen visar också att det fungerar på avsett sätt dvs för att lyfta ur och sätta tillbaka utåtgående sidohängda fönster. Verktyget har provats av branschfolk som varit positiva till lösningen men bedömt den som svår att använda beroende på att den består av för många delar och att det är en stor förändring jämför med dagens arbetssätt med två man i arbetslaget. Med hänsyn tagen till de synpunkter som kommit från branschfolk i detta projekt är ett naturligt nästa steg att förenkla och anpassa verktyget till ett tvåmansverktyg. Verktyget blir då mer lättanvänt för ett arbetslag på två personer. Tillverkningskostnaden blir dessutom lägre för det anpassade verktyget. Om den förenklade lösningen får ett genomslag på marknaden innebär detta att företaget kommer igång med försäljning och produktion. I ett senare skede kan företaget vidareutveckla och marknadsintroducera det enmans-verktyg som var ursprunget till detta projekt och som fortfarande bedöms vara den allra effektivaste lösningen för arbetsmomentet att lyfta av och på fönster.

Critical infrastructure is exposed to a wide range of hazards, capable to disrupt its operations in various degrees. This raises the question of which hazard scenario an operator shall use to assess the resilience of their critical infrastructure asset. Various techniques aiming to prioritize the various risks are commonly used in the literature. This study proposed an 8-step methodology, which aims to rank the risks of pre-defined hazard scenarios by eliciting the opinions of the stakeholders through a structured expert elicitation technique termed paired comparison. The novelty of the proposed technique is its ability to quantify the degree of disagreement regarding the ranking order of the scenarios and thus to capture the uncertainty associated with these risks.

The proposed methodology has been applied to four living labs, namely: the Oresund region, the port of Oslo, the A31 Highway in France and the potable water network in Barreiro. The applications aims to rank scenarios of natural and operational hazards according to their disaster- and emergency-risk. Despite the small number of participants, the results provide an excellent basis for further discussion regarding the most likely disaster or emergency risk scenarios. For most living labs, the ranking of the hazards using paired comparison was successful in identifying the scenarios associated with the highest risk. Overall, ranking the natural hazards according to their disaster- or emergency-risk has been associated with a higher degree of consensus than the ranking of the operational hazards reflecting on the higher complexity and perhaps the limited understanding of the later.

In more detail, snow storm is the hazard with the highest disaster risk for the A31 Highway. Similarly, earthquake is the hazard with the highest disaster risk for the water network in Barreiro. Three meteorological hazards ranked the highest for both the likelihood to occur and to cause disaster to the Øresund region. By contrast, the ranking of the hazards for the port of Oslo identified several scenarios with similar likelihood to cause disaster, which ranked very different in their likelihood to occur in the next 5 years. This raises question as to whether the most of least likely to occur scenarios is most suitable which can be answered in collaboration with the stakeholders.

With regard to the operational hazards, the contamination of the water in the water source or the distribution network due to an accident at the high-risk industrial SEVECO operations has been identified as the single scenario with the highest risk of disaster for the water network in Barreiro. Three events including a multiple day strike and two accidents in the wet bulk terminal have been identified as having the highest disaster risk for the port of Oslo. By contrast, no operational hazards can be identified as having the highest risk of occurrence for the A31 highway and the Øresund region

Specimens of coarse-grained Äspö diorite were axially compressed to observe stress-induced spalling. The specimens had a novel design characterized by two manufactured large radius notches on opposite sides. The tangential stress occurring in the notches aimed to represent the tangential loading around a circular opening. Fracture stages were monitored by acoustic emission measurements. Rock chips were formed similar to those found in situ, which indicates a similar fracture process. Slabs were cut out from the specimens and impregnated using a fluorescent material to visualize the cracks. The cracks were subsequently examined by the naked eye and by means of microscopy images, from which fracture paths could be identified and related to different minerals and their crystallographic orientations. The microscopy analyses showed how the stress field and the microstructure interact. Parallel cracks were formed 2–4 mm below the surface, sub-parallel to the direction of the maximum principal stress. The crack initiation, the roles of minerals such as feldspar, biotite and quartz and their grain boundaries and crystallographic directions are thoroughly studied and discussed in this paper. Scale effects, which relate to the stress gradient and microstructure, are discussed.

Temporary closure of plastic pipes by squeeze-off - state of the art State of the art and present use of squeeze-off methods for temporary closure of polymer pipelines for water and gas was investigated by an enquiry and a literature study. A limited, supplementary series of tests was also performed. The aim was to find, if possible, general limitations for use in terms of temperature at squeezing, pipe dimensions and materials, and to identify important problems that have to be analysed before guidelines can be issued regarding the use of the method. Some producers, suppliers and users in Sweden, were interviewed by the aid of a questionnaire. Although the investigation was limited, the answers are so homogeneous that they are considered representative. The belief is that the technique is harmful. It is used mostly for PE 80 and PE 100 materials and when necessary, e. g. when no valves are available. Decisions and risk assessments are mostly made ad hoc. The performance is according to manuals from producers and suppliers. Design of equipment, geometry, and recommended squeeze rates varies among suppliers. The literature on pipes consists mainly of papers from the 80-ies and 90-ies and from some research groups in the USA. There is a heuristic knowledge about formation and appearance of damage, and to some extent about the influence on service life. Newer research on general damage and fracture in polymers is available that is not related to the specific conditions in squeezed pipes. Such models are lacking, which may be due to the complexity of the area and its hands-on character. The commonly used PE 80 and PE 100 materials are clearly damaged by squeezing, particularly so for high compression levels, but the pipes still fulfil the requirements for use. Stronger and more crystalline materials, and larger pipe sizes, seem to be more severely damaged. It is not known how the damages influence slow crack growth and life. Squeeze-off on PE pipes with external longitudinal scratches should strictly be avoided. Also squeeze-off on PE pipes with PP coating at low temperature should be conducted with precaution until the opposite have been proven as some damage cases were reported. Removing the PP coating is recommended by some in this case. The experiments, on one old PE 80 pipe and two new PE 100 pipes with dimensions from 315 to 355 mm confirm the picture of damage. Commercial equipment was used and according to the supplier’s manual. All the pipes show similar damage, with crack formation and unevenness. Those are less significant for thinner pipe walls than for thicker ones. There is no apparent difference between new and old pipes. A few pressure tests were carried out on the squeezed pipes as well as the untouched pipes. The results show that no significant reduction of the lifetime could be proven regardless when an interrelated comparison between a squeezes and not squeezed pipe was made or when the lifetimes were compared with those obtained in earlier available material classification tests for the actual materials.

IMPROVER is a Horizon 2020 project focusing on how to improve European critical infrastructure resilience to crises and disasters through the implementation of resilience concepts to real life examples of pan-European significance, including cross-border examples.

The project will develop methodologies for the implementation of societal, organisational and technological resilience concepts to critical infrastructure. To this end, it requires several resilience-related concepts to be identified and defined.

This is the first version of the IMPROVER Lexicon of Definitions. It is the result of the first phase of the international survey conducted by the project and it gathers several resilience concepts and their definitions, as well as other key related terms. We envisage that this will be a dynamic document; that is to say that it will be updated and expanded throughout the duration of the project.

At this stage, the document identifies and lists several identified definitions for each relevant to critical infrastructure concept, followed by a discussion. This helps the reader to identify similarities, common elements and differences among the listed definitions and work towards selecting a suitable definition for his/her work. For the IMPROVER project, we foresee that in upcoming versions of the document, we will be able to suggest and agree one definition for each term, which will be used by the project partners for the duration of the project and will reflect the assumptions of the proposed IMPROVER methodology.

IMPROVER is a Horizon 2020 project focusing on how to improve European critical infrastructure resilience to crises and disasters through the implementation of resilience concepts to real life examples of pan-European significance, including cross-border examples.

The project will develop methodologies for the implementation of societal, organisational and technological resilience concepts to critical infrastructure. To this end, it requires several resilience-related concepts to be identified and defined.

This is the final version of the IMPROVER Lexicon of Definitions. It is the result of the international survey conducted by the project and it gathers several resilience concepts and their definitions, as well as other key related terms from all the current, completed deliverables in the project.

In this final version of the document, we offer a list of terms and their definitions which will reflect the assumptions of the proposed IMPROVER methodology and will be used by the project partners for the duration of the project. This lexicon will also serve as a recommendation for terminology towards the project partners, the associated partners, the collaborating projects and the CIP community in general.

In the recent years, the focus has moved from critical infrastructure protection to that of resilience. But how do we know whether a critical infrastructure is resilient or not, how can it be evaluated, measured and enhanced?

Drawing on, combining and developing the ideas of the existing literature and practices, the current report develops a holistic, easy-to-use and computable methodology to evaluate critical infrastructure resilience, called Critical Infrastructure Resilience Index (CIRI). The methodology is applicable to all types of critical infrastructure, including a possibility to tailor it to the specific needs of different sectors, facilities and hazard scenarios. The proposed methodology is especially suitable for organizational and technological resilience evaluation, but permits including also elements of societal resilience indicators to the evaluations.

The methodology is based on four levels of hierarchically organized indicators. Level 1 consists of the phases well known from the so-called crisis management cycle. Under these phases, we find sets of Level 2 rather generic indicators. Thus under level 1 ‘Prevention’, for instance, we may find a Level 2 indicator such as ‘Resilient design’, further divided into Level 3 more detailed indicators such as ‘Physical robustness’, ‘Cyber robustness’, ‘Redundancy’, ‘Modularity’, and ‘Independency’. The task is to study these indicators on Level 4 in the context of concrete critical infrastructure facilities and hazard scenarios, that is, applying Level 3 indicators into concrete circumstances.

The methodology then permits to transfer quantitative, semi-quantitative and qualitative evaluations of individual sector-specific resilience indicators into uniform metrics, based on process maturity levels. This in turn makes it possible to give a specific critical infrastructure, or its part, a resilience value on the scale 0-5.

While the real resilience value becomes clear only when one engages in the analysis of several indicators, the methodology can be used also as a step-by-step measurement and development tool for resilience, without necessary immediately engaging in time-consuming total resilience analysis.

The user of this methodology is supposed to be the operator of critical infrastructure, or part of it, in the spirit of self-auditing. In case it would be implemented in a wider scale, in cooperation between the operators and authorities, it would give the authorities a holistic picture about the respective society’s critical infrastructure resilience.

In this report, we draw a concise picture of the methodology and illustrate how this methodology could be applied to a specific infrastructure and hazard scenario.