Business model 

The Business Model Canvas illustrating the exploitation of the SmartResilience results relies on ERRA activities.

 

1       Customer segments and needs

Different customer segments that are targeted by ERRA.

·         Critical infrastructure operators / owners: This customer segment includes owners and operators of Critical Infrastructures. Their main objectives are to assess and improve the resilience of their infrastructures. All the critical infrastructures are potential target customers, as they all need to prepare resiliency plans and be prepared for all kinds of threats. Especially important are industrial, transport and health infrastructures as they are linked to large scale disasters and loss of human lives.

·         Government & regional/state boards: These are government, regional and state boards, as well as public authorities and emergency-response agencies in general. This also includes city councils and municipalities. Their main objectives are to reassure the resilience of the infrastructures within the area of their responsibility, as well as to ensure that responsibilities are clearly and transparently set. Tools like those offered will help them as well prioritize investments and inform/educate citizens.

·         Emergency-response agencies: They are secondary target customers which can benefit from resilience assessment. Knowing the actual resilience of the infrastructures contributes to their preparedness as well as they organize their training and their operations, in various scenarios of threats.

·         Standardization organizations: This customer segment includes organizations that develop standards. Their objectives are to provide uniform approaches for assessing the resilience of Critical Infrastructures. Standard approaches are slowly emerging and this work can be considered as fundamental for the future standardization organizations.

·         General Public: Includes the general public that wants to be informed about the resilience of the Critical Infrastructures in their area or country. This is mostly an indirect customer (e.g. through the city councils). (See the relevant description above).

2       Value propositions

The collection of products and services that ERRA offers to meet the needs of its customers.

·         Open, standardized, systematic approach for the identification of resilience gaps / for various threats and combinations, and set up of improvement plans: ERRA offers a comprehensive solution for assessing the resilience of Critical Infrastructures, including a customizable methodology and proposed indicators. This helps organizations in assessing their resilience against different kinds of threats (and combinations of threats), identify gaps that affect negatively the resilience, and setup plans to improve it.  All infrastructures can benefit from this value proposition, especially the industrial, transport or health ones, which are responsible for ensuring their security and resilience. The standardized approach not only addresses all potential threats and their combinations in a single, unified approach, but it also offers the potential to define the steps needed to organize their activities to ensure resilience in the long term.

·         Stress-testing: ERRA offers stress-testing approaches and tools for different kinds of disruptive events. This helps organizations to assess the effectiveness of their resilience measures in scenarios that include the materialization of consecutive threats. Stress-testing is linked with investment and planning and therefore it is primarily needed for infrastructures themselves which need to evaluate their situation before any investment is actually placed.

·         Optimal improvement planning: ERRA offers a multi-criteria decision support approach for defining optimal ways for improving the resilience as assessed using the included indicators. This helps organizations to effectively plan investments for the future without wasting in measure with little impact. In line with the above, this value proposition is useful mainly for infrastructures which need to improve their situation and make plans and request investments.

·         Standard approach for resilience assessment and benchmarking: ERRA offers a standardized approach for assessing the resilience of different types of Critical Infrastructures and against different kinds of threats. This helps organizations to assess, combine and compare the resilience of Critical Infrastructures that are owned or/and operated by different entities. This is very much needed by policy makers and governmental organizations who promote resilience strategies. This value proposition is suitable for all the identified users (see above, infrastructures on the one hand, in the sense of their responsibility to be reliable, but also:

o     authorities who need to evaluate and inform the citizens about the resilience of the infrastructures in their regions as these are related to the safety of the citizens.

o    emergency-response agencies, who wish to organize the response plans in various scenarios, given the conditions and resilience index of the infrastructures they are supporting.

·         Responsibility, accountability & resilience awareness: The resilience assessment provides ways to enhance accountability and information. The resilience plans and relative investments are publicized, the authorities (Government, regional/state boards) have been committed to them. This helps in setting up clearer responsibilities and improve the overall resilience within an area (i.e. city, region or country). The general public is well informed and aware, which also contributes to raising tolerance and understanding. This is the value proposition that addresses the needs of both infrastructures as well as every other organization involved, authority, emergency agency, or even citizens who wants to be informed about the safety issues in their regions.

·         Consulting and training: Consulting and training services are necessary for those who decide to adopt this approach and tools. Expert support on how to customize and adapt the service is important for any potential user, especially if they are not really familiar with the concepts of indicators, and resilience.

3       Channels

The different channels that may be used to deliver the value propositions to the customers.

·         Website, leaflets, conferences: Online website where the customer can download the tools and indicators. The websites also include information about the offerings that the customers may seek.

·         Networks / associations: Different dissemination and awareness raising activities through networks and associations of infrastructures may be a way to rapidly establish the relationship between SmartResilience providers and customers.

·         Physical presence to events, conferences, and scientific publications: ERRA personnel may have direct / physical interaction with the customers continues to be an important element for the raising awareness the project achievements, tools and valuable experiences of case study representatives.

·         Online service (PaaS, SaaS): Services and tools may be promoted in a PaaS or SaaS scheme by the customers. In the first scheme (PaaS) the customer may use parts of the ERRA tools and indicators to build their own custom resilience assessment solutions or to develop enriching applications. In the second scheme (SaaS) the customer may use the SmartResilience tools online. This is maybe the most prominent channel, which gives access to wider audiences beyond the reach of any single organization.

·         Standard committees & Working Groups: The participation or/and liaison of ERRA with standard committees and working groups is necessary for the adoption of the ERRA approaches as a standard.

4       Customer relationships

Types of relationships with the customers are outlined below. These are elaborated in each KER to show which one adopts which relationship.

·         Offering of a comprehensive service online for resilience assessment (SaaS): The customer may use the ERRAapproaches and tools on their own, using the online version of the tools.

·         Consulting contacts: Value may be delivered to the customers in a one-to-one approach, where ERRA offers full services to address each customer’s needs.

·         Tool support & maintenance: ERRA may provide support to the customers as to how to use the tool, resolve issues etc.

·         Standardization procedures: To adopt the ERRA approaches as a standard, a proposal submission is required and the interactions following the standardization procedures.

5       Revenue streams

These present summaries of ways that ERRA is expected to generate income from each customer segment. The detailed plans for approaching each KER are elaborated in the section below. 

·         Advertisements: ERRA may use advertisement sections within the tool to generate income.

·         Service contract: ERRA may sign contracts with organizations. The services may range from just customization of the methodology and selection of indicators, up to including new indicators and fully perform the resilience assessment and propose improvement measures.

·         Auditing: Customers may sign service contracts for external auditing (e.g. through the ERRA) or to build their own custom resilience assessment solutions.

6       Key resources

The resources that are necessary to create value for the customer. They are considered an asset and are needed in order to sustain and support the business. These are detailed below in the section of the presentation of KERs.

·         Open platform for European Resilience and Rating Assessment: The open platform (free access) is hosting the ResilienceTool.

·         CIRAM: The methodology for assessing the resilience of different types of Critical Infrastructures, different types of threats, and different phases of resilience.

·         SCI Dashboard: The tool that implements the methodology using indicators that can be selected for each assessment.

·         Indicators’ database: The full database of the indicators collected, including their properties, measurement, proposed values etc.

·         MCDM Tool: Tool to support decision making in investments for resilience improvement.

·         Visualization and resilience mapping Tool: Intuitive interactive visualization of resilience assessment.

·         Big data analytics for resilience assessment: Analysis of big data to derive resilience indicators and metrics.

·         e-Learning platform & courses: e-Learning platform and online courses for resilience training.

See the deliverable D3.7 for more details on the ResilienceTool.

7       Key activities

The most important activities are those that promote the above-mentioned value proposition and ideally maintaining all the components up-to-date to continue facilitate use and reaching wider customer shares.

·         Platform for assessing and visualizing resilience and investment planning: Maintaining the open platform hosting the ResilienceTool.

·         Consulting and Maintenance service for continuous resilience assessment / standardization guidelines: Maintaining the open platform and providing support to users.

·         Methodology & select indicators database to support the resilience assessment: Perform the customization of the methodology and select and add the appropriate indicators to address a customer’s needs.

·         Training / education: Online training for the targeted customers about the concepts of resilience and ways to assess and improve their resilience.

·         Developing, providing, maintaining and updating tools for assessing resilience and investment planning: Keep the methodology, tools and indicators updated as to the current state of the art.

8       Key partners

In order to optimize operations and reduce business risks, external organizations may cultivate the customer-supplier relationships, so that SmartResilience can focus on the core activities that create real added value.

·         External consultants: External consultant may perform key activities to deliver the value of ERRA, like using the methodology and tools to assess the resilience of Critical Infrastructures or customize, select and add appropriate indicators.

·         Indicator providers: Different organizations may provide new indicators to include in the SmartResilience indicators’ database.

·         Industry associations: Industry associations may provide new indicators and suggest improvements and indicator lists for assessing the resilience of Critical Infrastructures of specific industries.

9       Cost structure

This describes the most important monetary consequences while operating to execute the value propositions.

·         Personnel / administrative: Costs of the personnel that perform the core activities of ERRA. This include experts to perform assessments, customize the methodology, select the appropriate indicators, assess the indicators to the specific end-user needs, and feedback updates. It also includes administrative costs, like bookkeeping and maintaining and scheduling contacts.

·         IT maintenance: Costs for the maintenance and update of the IT infrastructure that is needed to execute the software tools and to support the administrative tasks.

·         Marketing & promotion: Costs for advertisements, marketing, participation in events (conferences, workshops), design and printing of promotional material.

·         Fees for external indicators: Costs for using and integrating indicators that are provided by external partners, like indicator providers, industry and updates elicited by the customers’ feedback.

 

 
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