The latest trends on terrorist attacks involve the use of new explosives as well as new attacking strategies. Currently, there are design tools available to evaluate the behaviour and the damage experienced by a conventional structure when facing a fire or expansive waves as a result of an explosion. What is missing are intelligent dynamic tools able to evaluate the degree of vulnerability of Critical Infrastructures, tools that can also help determine the most appropriate materials to design physical protection barriers.

A tool as the one mentioned above, will help identify the vital areas of the buildings susceptible of passive protection systems (e.g. armour systems, elastic structures) and the ones where an active protection system is required (e.g. sensor networks, video surveillance, alert systems). Increasing security of a building to a terrorism bomb attack requires new simulations tools that can help also design (or re-design) the building’s structures so that the damage to people and good are minimized. Intelligent protection systems will provide a greater effectiveness and rapidness in alert systems and evacuation protocols.

To achieve this target, this project proposes to develop a software tool for the intelligent design of Public Infrastructures which:
– optimizes the existing technologies as well as those under development
– tests new physical protection barriers