Background to the research project: Civil security

Civil security is one of the essential basic prerequisites for quality of life and value creation in Germany. Changing security policy framework conditions, processes of social change or trends such as digitization make it necessary to continuously develop security solutions and make them fit for the future.

Water supply for civil security

Water supply represents an essential infrastructure that must be protected against natural hazards, human and technical failure, as well as criminal and terrorist intervention. However, small and medium-sized utilities usually do not have sufficient resources to cover security-related tasks outside legal requirements and insurance conditions. This is where the DiregKomp research project comes in.

DiregKomp research project

The aim of the project is to identify safety-relevant tasks that do not have to be handled individually by each water utility and to derive modular services for analyzing and improving the operator-related protection system. Services include, for example, analyses of the current status of the protection system, further training offers and also the modification of coordination processes for common safety standards.

Goals of DiregKomp

Within the scope of the project, various methods will be integrated into a practically manageable protection system analysis, and various organizational models for service provision in a regional context will be elicited and prioritized. The goal is to establish a regional competence center, especially for small and medium sized operators, so that they can receive information and use the service to be developed to improve their own protection system. The overall goal is to protect the water supply in damage situations by providing operators with coordinated, up-to-date and mature protection concepts.

Advantages of the project

The advantage of the project is the low cost for the infrastructure operators, as cost-intensive individual solutions no longer have to be developed. These services will be designed in an application-oriented manner to facilitate exploitation. The services designed in this way will benefit both the collaborative partners as security service providers and small and medium-sized operators of critical infrastructures from the water supply sector.

Project partners, funding and data

The BMBF-funded research project DiregKomp is carried out by the Chair of Information Systems at the University of Potsdam and partners from the field. Project partners: Pretherm GmbH, Berliner Wasserbetriebe, Wasser- und Abwasserzweckverband Calau, Ministry of the Interior of the State of Brandenburg - Department 42.
Duration: 2011 - 2012