This proposal responds to the call Next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods (2022) (HORIZON-INFRA-2022-TECH-01). The proposal seeks to directly address the challenges to develop a new world-class research instrument integrating already existing NREN and EPOS infrastructures and Copernicus Marine service, from three European nations, as well as Pan-European and Pan-American institutions, to disseminate FAIR compliant State of Polarisation and Distributed Acoustic Sensor data, gathered from the same, already installed, live, telecommunications submarine optical fibres, in a temporally consistent and geographically dispersed way. Such an instrument would deliver innovative scientific instrumentation, methods and tools as well as advancing the involved research infrastructures by developing new state of the art services and long-term data sets of unique scientific value. This project will enable continuous recording of these types of data for research use by NRENs for the first time, thus supporting of diverse academic, industrial and governmental user communities. Through the integration with EPOS data infrastructure , existing research communities in solid earth (EPOS) and marine science (EMSO), industrial and public body communities can be complimented with entirely new types of data sets unavailable to them before, which it is believed will lead to new areas of research.

The European submarine networks are vital critical infrastructure for the EU member states. This submarine cable and pipeline network is crucial for the European society and any failure or damage to it could potentially have an enormous effect on the societies. Due to the rapidly evolving threat and geopolitical landscape, especially with incidents like the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas infrastructure, organizations overseeing critical infrastructure face significant challenges. They must handle intentional threats while also grappling with growing problems caused by accidental and natural factors as well as climate change. These issues can worsen the effects of deliberate actions. To address these challenges effectively, it is crucial for these entities to implement resilience-enhancing measures. The aim of VIGIMARE is to strengthen the resilience of Critical Infrastructure operators against threats to the European submarine critical infrastructure by developing, testing and evaluating an innovative solution to enhance security and reduce risks of physical and cyber-attacks on submarine cables and pipelines. This will be accomplished by 1) mapping submarine systems, surveying cables and landing stations, and assessing vulnerabilities in the European submarine critical infrastructure network, 2) develop an automated threat detection approach, creating a real-time shared awareness of the surface above the submarine infrastructure to promptly indicate incidents to both critical infrastructure owners and member states authorities. By integrating a comprehensive resilience ecosystem with real incidents at sea, the project seeks to 3) identify early warning signals, support analysis, and pinpoint potential response activities to address physical, cyber and hybrid threats. The result will be enhanced resilience for submarine critical infrastructure owners, supporting authorities to enforce the CER and NIS2 directives implementation in the EU member states.