Home Subsea Coming to grips with security risks: Germany backs project for keeping critical subsea infrastructure out of harm’s way
Given the worldwide rise in threats to energy and other underwater industries’ infrastructure such as offshore installations, pipelines, and cables, many countries, especially in Europe, have been upping their security ante to prevent further attacks. To this end, a project, dedicated to enhancing maritime situational awareness around critical subsea infrastructures with advanced big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, has received a €2.4 million federal grant from Germany. Close collaboration has been pinpointed as a key to the success of the project and the handling of protection challenges.
Argus project; Source: north.io
The events that took place over the past couple of years have shaken the foundations of the existing world order, eating away at its fabric and leaving many in fear of seeing the freedoms and human rights they currently enjoy being stripped away and supplanted by restrictions, discrimination, and oppression. The ongoing and growing geopolitical tensions also play a part in endangering subsea infrastructure, especially in certain hotspots such as the Middle East, where Iran has vowed to retaliate over Israel’s alleged assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political wing, which is not the same as the military wing of the Palestinian nationalist organization, the Qassam Brigades.
The high-stakes escalation could spread to the neighboring countries and engulf the entire Middle East into ragging battles for supremacy, leaving countless casualties in its wake. The red flag this situation is raising needs to be handled with utmost care to navigate the dangers that lie in wait and prevent further bloodshed and armed conflict by tackling the root cause of the issue. Since the Gaza situation turned into a full-blown crisis, Tehran has already retaliated to one of Israel’s previous moves related to an attack on Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria.
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Posted: 3 months ago
A close eye needs to be kept on the volatile situation in the Middle East, which requires diplomacy, tact, and great skill to be employed in finding a resolution and ending the Israel-Gaza conflict with a two-state solution that bears all the hallmarks of a lasting peace recipe. However, this is not the only peril-filled region in the world, as many other political and military conflicts keep the global powers occupied, as the world holds its breath to see what will come next. One of the closely watched conflicts is the one in Ukraine, which turned Russia into a pariah throughout the Western world.
Even though the risk of cyberattacks existed long before the Ukraine crisis hit in 2022, this is still one of the main growing geopolitical factors, as illustrated by multiple attacks on subsea infrastructure across Europe. The first major incidents came in September 2022, when four gas leaks were found on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines,