With the objective to summarize the state-of-the-art as a basis for the development of a framework for the future testing of critical infrastructures (CIs), WP2 reviews, compares and analyses the methodologies and findings from (i) advanced Plant Safety Assessment studies for nuclear power plants (NPPs), (ii) post-Fukushima stress tests for NPPs, (iii) national standards for hazard and risk assessment and for stress tests for different classes of CIs, (iv) lessons learned from recent catastrophic events, and (v) achievements and heritage of relevant on-going and completed EU projects.

WP2 Leader: BUH (Peter Zwicky)

WP3 focuses on hazard assessment for natural low probability-high consequence (LP-HC) events with the perspective of critical infrastructures (CIs) as the potential assets at risk. This WP compares existing and develops innovative approaches that help to define the epistemic uncertainties in hazard assessments, with focus on extreme events. It addresses the hazard and scenarios definition of extended facilities or systems, quantifies the epistemic uncertainty reduction at different spatial scales (regional versus site-specific), evaluates correlated hazards and cascading events and provides the results and appropriate intensity measures (IM), which are necessary to other WP analysis.

WP3 Leadern: UJF (Fabrice Cotton)

The objectives of WP4 are: to characterize the performance assessment of the selected critical infrastructure (CI) classes with respect to hazard scenarios (initiating events) and the resulting consequence analysis (triggered loss); to address vulnerability models required by stress tests on non-nuclear CIs exposed to natural hazards; to assess probabilistically the systemic performance for the selected CI classes in a multi-risk environment (including cascading risks) and standardized manner (i.e. exportable); to address the quantitative resilience of the facility and its performance with respect to post-accident risk management; to propose a taxonomy of CIs based on their vulnerability characteristics and exposure to natural hazard initiating events; to define appropriate measures of societal resilience to CI failures.

WP4 Leader: AMRA (Iunio Iervolino)

The objectives of WP5 are: to design the stress test methodology for non-nuclear infrastructures and to develop a framework for conducting critical infrastructure (CI) stress tests; to extend the stress test methodology from individual CIs to systems of non-nuclear infrastructures that support the functioning of communities in Europe and the European society as a whole, and gauge consequences and impacts in the wider context; to incorporate stress tests into the long-term planning and life cycle management of critical non-nuclear infrastructures; to create the foundations to enhance societal resilience to CI failure.

WP5 Leader: ETH Zurich (Bozidar Stojadinovic)

The goal of the stress test applications is to establish and validate standardized approaches adequate for different classes of critical infrastructure (CI), which could be applied to similar infrastructures in the future. STREST selected CIs in Europe representative for each of the three identified CI classes. These CIs participate as associated industrial partners in STREST to validate and refine the stress test methodology framework developed in WP5. Importantly, WP6 is intrinsically linked to WP5 in terms of knowledge transfer and person-month participation.

WP6 Leader: AUTH (Kyriazis Pitilakis)

The dissemination activities aim at communicating to regulators and operators of non-nuclear critical infrastructures (CIs): gas and electricity networks, transportation networks, medical service networks, petrochemical plants, and in general all high risk and high economic and environmental impact infrastructures, of the products developed during the project, namely harmonized methodologies for risk assessment leading to the standardization and implementation in Europe of stress tests methodologies for main classes of infrastructures against natural hazards. Overall, the dissemination activities will have an impact on the society at large, by incorporating stress test methodologies in current management and long-term planning of critical non-nuclear infrastructures.

WP7 Leader: JRC (Fabio Taucer)

The Valais region of Switzerland is composed by the Rhone valley and its lateral tributaries, many of which are dammed. Owing to its topography, precipitations and coverage of glaciers at high altitudes, Switzerland is the European country with the highest density of large dams in its territory, providing close to 60% of the electricity supply of the country. Switzerland hosts 25 dams with height over 100m; of these, 7 are in the Valais, including major arch dams like Emosson and Mauvoisin (the highest arch dam in Europe at 250m) and gravity dams like Grande Dixence (the highest concrete gravity dam in the world at 285m, with a 401 mio m³ retaining capacity) and Mattmark (the largest earthen dam in Europe).

Major hydrocarbon gas and oil pipelines traverse Turkey to connect the oil and gas sources in Middle East and Caucasus with Balkans and Eastern Europe, securing the strategic supply of critical energy resources to Europe. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is a crude oil pipeline from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field in the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. At a length of 1,768km, the BTC Pipeline is the second-longest oil pipeline in the former Soviet Union and one of the great engineering endeavours of the 21st century. The pipeline is buried along its entire length, and includes eight pumping stations. It has a capacity to export 1,000 mio barrels of oil per day. Other major hydrocarbon pipelines in the area include (i) the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) Natural Gas Pipeline (or South Caucasus Pipeline), closely following the path of the BTC pipeline and transporting natural gas from the Caspian Sea to the city of Erzurum, Turkey, and (ii) the natural gas transmission pipeline between Ambarlı terminal (European side) and Pendik Terminal (Asian side) in Marmara Sea, along a route that runs in proximity of the Main Marmara Fault.

Since decades, on- and off-shore natural gas production and distribution is the key component of the national energy supply in the Netherlands. The gas distribution relies on a major gas pipeline infrastructure, with a total length of over 12,000km of installed pipes in Holland alone, operated by Gasunie. The production from the Groningerveld gasfield and other natural gas fields mostly located in the north east part of the country supply the Dutch economy and major export across Europe, via cross-border long distance gas pipelines (European Natural Gas Round-About). Onshore fields are expected to be depleted in half a century or earlier, while off-shore reserves are still being developed; in addition, Holland is building an LNG terminal in the Rotterdam harbor area, which will feed ‘shipped-in’ gas into the main gas pipeline infrastructure. While the emphasis so far was on gas extraction, Holland is now planning to use depleted gas fields as permanent CO₂ storage or seasonal gas pumping storage. In addition, the possibility to exploit shale gas reserves is being debated.

The port of Thessaloniki is a major European port and the natural gateway for the economic activities of the inland markets beyond Greece into the Balkans and Central Europe. It serves the growing needs of those countries for the import and export of raw material, consumer products and capital equipment. The port is a vital element of the country's economy while it also plays a substantial role in the effort of Northern Greece and its centre city to be established as the economic centre of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is being located at the crossroad of land transportation networks: East-West via the Egnatia Highway, South-North via the P.A.Th.E. Highway network - the European corridors IV and X. The port of Thessaloniki has a total quay length of 6,200m and a sea depth down to 12 meters. It has 600,000 m² of indoor and open storage area and modern mechanical equipment for the secure and prompt handling of all kinds of cargo, general, bulk and containers. It handles over 16 mio tons of cargo per year (7 mio tons dry cargo and 9 mio tons liquid fuel cargo), 370,000 TEUs containers, 3,000 ships and 220,000 passengers.

The Po plain hosts one of the highest concentrations of small and medium-size industry in Europe. Production is normally hosted in four typologies of industrial pre-cast buildings, namely (a) one storey buildings made up of a series of parallel portal frames, (b) two single bay, single storey frames linked by perpendicular beams which carry the main roof beams, (c) a similar to type (a) but with truss steel beams substituting the concrete beams, that enable to cover larger spans, and (d) multi-storey structures, characterized by monolithic columns fixed at the base and single span beams with pinned ends. The industrial district comprised between Finale Emilia and Mirandola in Emilia, Italy, is one of the premier European districts for medical technologies production and for the food sector. It has been severely damaged by the earthquake sequence initiated on May 20th 2012, and in particular by the two main shocks of May 20th (Mw 5.9) and May 28th (Mw 5.8). Damage to industrial facilities was extensive, totalling over 13,000 mio €.