Laurea receives EU-funding for surveillance of Critical Submarine Infrastructure

The European submarine network is a vital Critical Infrastructure for the EU member states, and any failure or damage to it could potentially have an enormous effect on the societies in the EU member states. The EU Submarine network includes telecommunication cables, gas pipelines, and power cables.

Laurea University of Applied Sciences has received 500 000 euros in EU-funding for a research project that aims to strengthen the resilience of Critical Infrastructure Owners against threats to the European submarine Critical Infrastructure.

VIGIMARE – Vigilant Maritime Surveillance of Critical Submarine Infrastructure, is a three-year project that starts in September 2024. Laurea University of Applied Sciences is the coordinator of the project. This is the first project that Laurea has won within the highly competitive EU Critical Infrastructure sector.

– The rapidly evolving threat and geopolitical landscape, especially with incidents like the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas infrastructure, and the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia in the autumn of 2023, makes this project extremely relevant, Johanna Karvonen, the VIGIMARE Project Coordinator, explains.

Among the project partners are CINIA Oy, Finland’s leading owner and builder of telecommunication submarine cables, the National Emergency Supply Agency (NESA), Gas Networks Ireland who owns and operates the entire gas network in Ireland, GAZ-SYSTEM, a strategic company for Poland's economy and energy security, as well as the Italian Electricity transmission company TERNA and Enivibes, who presents innovative technology for Pipeline Leak Detection globally. These Critical Infrastructure owners will be working together in the project with leading partners from both industry and security research.

The VIGIMARE project will provide an information sharing environment to the Critical Infrastructure Owners to build their resilience against physical, cyber and hybrid threats to the EU submarine Critical Infrastructure. The project will also support the EU member states to fulfil the EU CER and NIS-2 directives’ requirements.

The VIGIMARE project is funded by Horizon Europe, which is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation. The entire grant is approximately 4 800 000 euros.

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