Abstract
Large-scale disasters can lead to the collapse of the economy, our daily living conditions and, ultimately, the functioning of the state. This is obviously unacceptable, therefore the prevention of natural and industrial disasters and the management of the associated risks are one of the central elements of Hungary's national security strategy.
Disasters caused by various causes threaten our vital infrastructure, our energy production and our rivers, lakes and other natural water resources.
Hungary prioritises the effective protection of municipal, transportation, electric and IT infrastructure. It must be ensured that any failure or cyberattack on the operation of this infrastructure is preventable and, as far as possible, infrequent and manageable.
One of the critical conditions for preventing natural disasters is to mitigate the effects of climate change. The priority solution for decarbonisation of energy production is based on nuclear energy, and this also means that special attention must be paid to domestic nuclear protection.
Our natural water resources are threatened by disasters induced by weather or climate extremes, or pollution, which can damage water supply, water transport or ecological values. At the same time, floods themselves are a source of danger in cities, floodplains and inland bays.
Our domestic security must also be ensured by research, development and production of cutting-edge defence industry technologies. Strategic technologies include new types of materials, cyber defence, big data management and artificial intelligence, autonomous platforms and devices, environment and threat detection, and communications.
Our research topic area brings together basic and applied research and experimental developments that contribute to the security of the above strategic elements. Our professional tasks include the detection of state changes, the rapid detection and evaluation of threats, the modelling of their system behaviour, safe and at the same time economical planning, hence, ultimately the effective management of disaster risk.
The tasks related to the research and development of system models were grouped into the topics of infrastructure and energy supply, natural waters, and strategic technologies. These tasks include floods, earthquakes, fires, accidents, nuclear disasters, etc. directly aimed at modelling catastrophic behaviour. In the case of energy security and strategic industrial processes related to the defence industry (nanotechnology; production of polymers, metal foams) to describe their efficiency and reliability. Additional responsibilities for the security of these critical systems and processes — process control, sensing, signal processing, communication, and data protection — are also covered in our topic area.
The flowchart and list below summarizes planned tasks.
• Research, modelling and development of design procedures for critical infrastructure and energy supply (geological and nuclear safety, fire protection, water utilities, chemical energy storage)
• Research and modelling of extreme behaviour and climate dependence of natural waters (extremes of rivers, lakes and catchments; climate vulnerability; adaptation and sustainability)
• Supporting strategic manufacturing processes related to the defence industry with material science solutions (applied materials science and photonics, functional nanomaterials, production, manufacturing and industrial application of metals and polymer materials, green electronics)
• Safety-critical process control and prediction (robust control methods, machine learning agents, robotics and manufacturing technology, increasing the safety of atmospheric and mechanical processes)
• Sensorial data acquisition and signal processing technologies (smart data acquisition and processing, data mining, environment and threat detection, multiobject and multisensor systems)
• Data security and communication (cognitive and communication skills, data security issues of artificial intelligence, security of communication technologies)
Research on disaster prevention, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, materials science, nuclear technology, water science and autonomous systems related to these priority RDI areas of BME. An internationally competitive research team is involved in achieving the objectives with the participation of all eight faculties of the University.
Among the key objectives of the thematic area is to keep talented young researchers at home and the on-site training of a highly qualified team of professionals serving industrial needs.
Hungary