Aleksandar Jovanovic

CEO
Steinbeis EU-VRi (European Risk & Resilience Institute)

CEO of Steinbeis EU-VRi European Risk and Resilience Institute in Stuttgart, Germany.
• Full professor at Steinbeis University
• Past-Associate Member of ETH Zürich Risk Center, Switzerland
• Advisor at Beijing Academy of Science and Technology.
Previous academic and research assignments:
• Politecnico di Milano (Italy), University of Stuttgart (Germany), Ecole Polytechnique (France), University of Tokyo (Japan), University of California La Jolla (USA), the European Commission (Belgium, Italy), Argonne Ntl. Lab. (USA), Capital University Beijing, etc.
Professional experience:
• Work in 12 countries, in industry, research and academia
• Project manager of over 150 large international/multinational projects in the area of innovation management, new technologies, risk management, advanced data analysis and data mining, and related areas; projects for the EU, national governments, industry, utilities, insurances companies, R&D and academia). Main projects deal with risk and resilience management (e.g., for insurance, power, process plants), resilience indicators and the application of AI (artificial intelligence).
• Convener of the national, European and ISO standards: CEN-CWA 15740:2008 (“RBI”), EN16991:2018 (“RBI”) and CEN-CWA 16449:2013 (“Management on New Technologies- Related Risks”), ISO TS 31050 (“Management of emerging risks for enhanced resilience”), DIN-SPEC 91461:2022 (“Framework for stress- testing resilience of industrial plants and sites”).
• Coauthor of the milestone study on Future Global Shocks of the OECD (2013), author of 7 books (among them “Expert Systems in Structural Safety Assessment”, Springer 1989, one of the earliest books on application of AI in engineering) and over 150 publications.
• Speaks fluently French, Italian, English, German and Serbian

Sessions

ECSCI Workshop
Hybrid Workshop for the European Cluster for Securing Critical Infrastructures (ECSCI) Cluster
The European Directive on Critical Entity Resilience (CER Directive, following the preceding directive on critical infrastructures (CIs), from 2008) is currently in the implementation phase.
Adopted and published in 2022, it entered into force in 2023, and, on October 18, 2024 it became applicable (mandatory) in the EU and replaced the preceding directive. The EU Member States are supposed to adopt national strategies for enhancing the resilience of critical entities and identify critical entities by 2026. The European Commission will report to the European Parliament and Council on the compliance with the Directive by 2027 and provide the review of the Directive impact by 2029.
Already the previous directive, designated over 100 CIs as the CIs with possible cross-border impact – the number estimated to exceed 15,000 CIs by 2027, involving possibly over 25,000 experts across CI operators, consultancies, governments and other stakeholders.
The above numbers, the some already experienced delays and the need to implement the Directive together with the other EU Directives (e.g., the NIS2), show the complexity and importance of the Directive and its implementation. The European Cluster for Securing Critical Infrastructures (ECSCI, https://www.ecsci.eu) set as one of its goals to contribute to the implementation of the Directive, by aligning the opinions, activities and outcomes of the EU research projects. The respective ECSCI survey results will be presented at the workshop.
This short ECSCI Workshop intends to look at the status of the Directive implementation, the challenges experienced or expected and the “international context”. The cross-border impacts are an important element of the Directive and these aspects are not limited to the EU only – hence the workshop will include the views from within and outside the EU (tentatively non-EU European countries, Canada, US, Australia, ISO, …). Thanks to the hybrid format envisaged, both the participants onsite and those participating online will be able to share their views.
Organizers:
– Prof. Aleksandar JOVANOVIC (online coordinator)
CEO, Steinbeis European Risk & Resilience Institute (EU-VRi), Germany
– Dr. Manos ATHANATOS (onsite coordinator)
Senior Technical Project Manager, Technical University of Crete (TUC), Greece