The global Oil and Gas Industry operates more than 7000 platforms worldwide. Almost all of them have already passed their design life and require condition assessment for the justification of extension of life. In addition floating equipment using mooring lines has faced considerable problems in the past 10 years. Over 185 mooring lines have been lost in this period creating a damage of over 1 million Euro each. The offshore wind industry has started to install thousands of structures offshore and require condition monitoring by law (i.e. HSB requirements in Germany). Condition monitoring using ambient vibrations has a good reputation onshore already. VCE has been one of the leading suppliers of these services for 20 years. A major opportunity, but also challenge, is to develop an autonomous, robust monitoring unit for offshore application. VCE is determined to develop such a device based on previous developments and experience.

Over the past 2 decades, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has exponentially increased toward complete automation of structural inspection and assessment tasks. This trend will continue to rise in image processing as unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and the internet of things (IoT) markets are expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 57.5% and 26%, respectively, from 2021 to 2028. It is generally accepted that AI will drive the next revolution in autonomous inspection and health monitoring of civil infrastructure. The possibility of complete automation of the inspection process resulted in a lot of attention from the scientific community leading to a plethora of research in this area. FOURIER intends to establish a network of individual research projects working towards breaking through and innovative system state monitoring (stm) techniques – via the use of AI for large-scale autonomous systemic monitoring, inspection and proactive testing including respective explicit identification of information gaps and uncertainties (information quality) of Complex Engineering Systems to improve their resilience against failures, accidents, sabotage, disruptions and disasters. The objective of FOURIER is to offer innovative research training as well as knowledge exchange opportunities for Doctoral Candidates (DCs) through cross-border and cross-sector mobility for future growth in Europe. FOURIER is an inter/multi-disciplinary and intersectoral programme as it includes seven academic partners, three research centers and seven private companies and two end users from seven different European countries.

EXCHANGE-Risk is an Intersectoral/International Research and Innovation staff exchange scheme between academia and the industry in Europe and North America focusing on mitigating Seismic Risk of buried steel pipeline Networks that are subjected to ground-imposed permanent deformations. It also aims at developing a Decision Support System for the Rapid Pipeline Recovery to minimize the time required for inspection and rehabilitation in case of a major earthquake. EXCHANGE-Risk involves novel hybrid experimental and numerical work of the soil-pileline system at a pipe, pipeline and network level integrated with innovative technologies for rapid pipe inspection. The outcome of the project is a series of well targeted exchanges between the partners (involving more than 30 early stage and experienced researchers) within a well defined framework of innovation that ensures transfer of knowledge between the academia and the industry, Europe and North America as well wide dissemination of the methodologies and tools developed to the engineering community.

The tremendous impact of natural hazards, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, etc, which triggered technological accidents, referred to as natural-technological (NaTech) events, was demonstrated by: i) the recent Tohoku earthquake and the following Fukushima disaster in 2011; ii) the UK’s 2015 winter floods which topped £5bn, with thousands of families and businesses that faced financial problems because of inadequate or non-existent insurance. The NaTech problem is quite relevant as up to 10% of industrial accidents, involving the release of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and high-yield Explosives (CBRNE) substances, were triggered by natural hazards. To implement and support the Seveso II Directive 2012/18/EU which regulates the control of major accident hazards involving dangerous substances, XP-RESILIENCE intends to establish a network of individual research projects working towards Advanced Modelling and Protection –via metamaterial-based isolators/layouts- of Complex Engineering Systems for Disaster Reduction and Resilient Communities. In fact, today there is a stronger need than ever to grow researchers that combine a robust academic foundation in reliability/resilience with practical experiences, technological expertise with awareness of the socio-economical context and conviction to furthering research with an entrepreneurial spirit. Hence, the objective of XP-RESILIENCE is to offer innovative research training ground as well as attractive career development and knowledge exchange opportunities for Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) through cross-border and cross-sector mobility for future growth in Europe. XP-RESILIENCE is an inter/multi-disciplinary and intersectoral programme as it includes seven academic partners, one Institute of Applied Science and seven private companies from ten different European countries.