The SECONOMICS Project

The SECONOMICS Project (Security meets Socio-Economics Methododologies) led by University of Trento is funded by the European Union - Cooperation Theme 10: Security Research in the context of FP7 program. SECONOMICS starts February 1st 2012 and it lasts for three years.

SECONOMICS goal is synthesizing sociological, economic and security science into a usable, concrete, actionable knowledge for policy makers and social planners responsible for citizen's security.

It is a collaborative project on the socio-economics of security, with a specific focus on the interplay between information security and physical security, driven by three key cases studies in critical infrastructure protection: in international air transportation (Turkey’s airport security), in local transportation (Barcelona’s city transportation) and in energy distribution (the UK’s National Grid). These sectors are all critical to the economic and social lives of EU member states. Our scientific approach will integrate expertise into social, economic, system and risk modelling and will provide a basis for initial developments of decision-support methodologies and tools for policy makers.

The first unique feature of SECONOMICS is that it is led by industry case studies with the objective of achieving a pan-European cross-mission impact. The R&D work-packages are designed to interact fluidly with one another to identify social contexts, outline risk and economic costs, and model policy solutions which can then be tested using the unparalleled access afforded by the high-level interactions with domains of these case studies. The results can then be distilled into cross-mission policy toolkits that make it possible for decision makers to adapt the general socio-economic methodologies to their concrete problems. The second unique feature of SECONOMICS is the focus on integrating physical and information security issues. At the systems and enforcement level this focus has been a routine occurrence in many projects (e.g., outputs from previous project such as EUSECON, NEAT, SEABILLA and RIBS). However, there has been less focus on using the identifiable threats to help to formulate concrete policy instruments for decision-makers. We seek to fill this gap.

The adoption of these two unique features of the project is essential to address the key challenges that our society faces to address the issue of security.

• UNITN is the project coordinator and participants to the project with its expertise Empirical research for requirements engineering in the 3 case studies and in the modellling of risk and economics models.
• DBL will coordinate the collection of users’ needs and requirements in the airport domain, to feed the modelling WPs, and then validate their models with users. DBL will also assist in the validation of the SECONOMICS tool and in the dissemination activities.
• ISST (Fraunhofer ISST) will participate as the leader of WP 8 to the project. Especially, the Fraunhofer ISST will coordinate the tool-kit implementation with all other WPs.
• URJC will aid in developing risk analysis methods, model and tools of relevance in critical infrastructure protection taking into account the presence of intelligent adversaries. They will also bring in ample socio-political experience in dealing with terrorism. They will support the application of those models in the proposed case studies.
• ABDN (University of Aberdeen) will lead WP6 on economics and systems models of security problems. The team from Aberdeen will provide its expertise to the case study workpackages and to the project as a whole via WP7 and WP8. The Aberdeen group has extensive experience at implementing systems models and applying economic techniques to security problems in both an industry and academic context.
• TMB will contribute to WP3 which is lead by Atos Origin with their know-how, experience and providing dates and facts to methodology construction. Furthermore, TMB will validate the urban transport project results.
• ATOS will lead WP3, “Transport use case” with the collaboration of TMB., and the WP9 “Outreach and community building”.
• SecureNOK will lead WP7 on cross mission consolidation and the development of the SECONOMICS framework. It will also provide expertise in business modelling to WP6, risk modelling and analysis to WP5 and critical infrastructure protection to the case study workpackages, particularly to the UK Grid case study.
• ASC (The Institute of Sociology) will participate as the leader of WP 4 to the project. The IS AS CR team will concentrate on conceptualization, developing methods and empirical comparative research, and case study and comparative analysis on public perception and acceptance of risk and security issues. The team will also contribute extensive knowledge on new member states of the EU from Central and Eastern Europe.
• NGRID (National Grid) is the UK’s major gas and electricity supplier. National Grid will bring expertise on future and emerging security threats for critical infrastructure and provide case study evidence and impact led research in support of the R&D workpackages. National Grid will interface with WP6 in particular to provide information that assists in the development of systems models of security architecture and the impact of policy on the effectiveness of security, in particular in the context of future and emerging threats.
• Anadoulu Airport University will provide its first quality expertise and experience on airport security for WP1 and to inform the R&D WPs’ work. It will also support the exploitation and dissemination work directed towards the airport community and stakeholders.

The project results are reported in the activities in Security Economics, Malware Analysis, Vulnerability Discover Models, Empirical Validation of Risk and Security Requirements Methodologies.

You can find some details on the project in the project official web site.