Water Infrastructure Protection against Intentional Attacks. An experience in Italy

Water Supply Infrastructures have the mission to provide water for residential, industrial and agricultural uses. In the last years many interesting studies were devoted to the development of technologies and methodologies for the protection of water supply systems against intentional attacks. However the application to real systems is still limited for different economical and technical reasons. The Water Engineering Lab (L.I.A.) of University of Cassino (Italy) was involved in two research projects financed by the European Commission in the framework of the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (E.P.C.I.P.). Both projects, developed in partnership with a large Italian Water Company, have the common objective of providing guidelines for enhancing security in water supply systems respect to the intentional contamination risk. The final product is represented by the arrangement of a general procedure for protection systems design of water networks. In the paper the procedure is described through the application to two real water systems, characterized by different size and behaviour.