Security and protection of critical infrastructures are growing interests for the European Union. The EU has put these topics among its political-strategic orientations in the recovery plan.

Scenarios about security are constantly mutating, targets of shifting threats and climate change-induced challenges, demographic growth and political instability outside continental borders.
Globalization, free circulation and digital evolution are on one side prosperity, growth and innovation but on the other imply risks and intrinsic costs oftentimes used by terrorist groups and organized crime, “informatic” crime included. The crisis brought by COVID-19 has shaped an additional dimension of threats, underlining the necessity of granting security both in physical and digital environments and of guaranteeing strategic autonomy to European supply chains for what regards products, services, infrastructures and technology.

LINKS Foundation has been working on these themes for a long time with a multidisciplinary approach, strongly converging many technological trends from the protection of linked systems to big computing infrastructures to artificial intelligence. LINKS boasts experiences in many fields such as the protection of critical infrastructures, the fight against terror and crime, immigration and border security, the adaptation to climate change, the reduction of risks from extreme natural disasters and the increase in the population’s resilience, cybersecurity.

The Foundation’s experiences follow an applied research approach that aims to impact the territory for what concerns digital and process innovation, mainly contributing towards three Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations: SDG 9 (Industrialization, Innovation and resilient Infrastructures), SDG 10 (Reduce inequality), SDG 13 (Climate action), SDG 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions).