Multi-sensor cognitive-based approach to critical infrastructure protection

Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) represents a particularly relevant issue worldwide. Moreover, the evolution of technologies at the disposal of criminal activities is leading to an increasing need for a technological basis and relevant knowledge to improve security capabilities. Especially, more work has to be done in defining a security architecture that takes into account cascading effects, inter and intra dependencies, distributes the intelligence in the infrastructure to increase its robustness, trustworthiness and resilience. According to this statement, an innovative situation awareness and assessment based approach for the monitoring of Critical Infrastructures is proposed. In particular, based on recent studies on artificial cognitive systems, we explore the concepts for designing interactive, adaptable and intelligent multi sensor surveillance systems able to react to situations in a preventive and manageable way. To reach this goal, in this paper we emphasize that innovative strategies could be based on the integration of heterogeneous sensing devices, such as distributed cognitive radio sensors for communication and monitoring and a network of smart cameras for the interpretation of interactions and events.