TRANSCEND project at ALICE Innovation Theatre

Project Information

The TRANSCEND project (Transport Resilience against Cyber and Non-Cyber Events to prevent Network Disruption) aims to strengthen the resilience and security of critical freight transport infrastructures across Europe.

Transport networks are a fundamental component of Critical Infrastructures (CIs) that support logistics operations and the functioning of the European single market. While the development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) has increased connectivity and efficiency, it has also increased exposure to potential disruptions, including physical incidents, cyber-attacks and hybrid threats.

The EU-funded TRANSCEND project addresses these challenges by equipping freight transport operators with advanced tools, operational guidelines and technological solutions to better prevent, detect and respond to risks affecting transport infrastructure.

The project develops an integrated digital platform – the TRANSCEND Control Tower – and validates its approach through real-world pilot demonstrations across multiple transport environments in Europe.

Objectives and ambition

The overarching objective of TRANSCEND is to enhance the protection, security and resilience of freight transport critical infrastructures against physical, cyber and hybrid threats.

To achieve this goal, the project focuses on:

• Improving understanding of the threat landscape affecting freight transport systems
• Identifying vulnerabilities within large-scale interconnected transport infrastructures
• Enhancing early detection of threats and incidents
• Developing operational procedures and resilience strategies for infrastructure operators
• Implementing innovative security tools and technologies
• Strengthening cooperation between transport operators, authorities and other critical infrastructure stakeholders

Through these activities, TRANSCEND aims to support the development of more resilient and secure multimodal transport networks across Europe.

Control Tower digital platform

A key innovation developed within the project is the TRANSCEND Control Tower, a modular digital platform designed to monitor, analyse and anticipate risks affecting freight transport infrastructures.

The platform integrates multiple data sources and provides shared situational awareness across organisations, helping break down operational silos and enabling coordinated decision-making.

Using business intelligence, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the Control Tower supports stakeholders in identifying vulnerabilities, predicting disruptions and responding effectively to incidents.

The platform consists of six main components:

• Ecosystem Analysis
• Resilience Assessment
• Process Mining
• Cargo Integrity Monitoring
• Regional Orchestration
• Security Incident Monitoring

Together, these modules create a scalable architecture capable of improving visibility of risks and strengthening operational resilience across the transport ecosystem.

Pilot demonstrations

To demonstrate the effectiveness of its solutions, TRANSCEND conducts three pilot implementations across Europe, covering different types of freight transport infrastructures.

Real-world pilots

• Luxembourg – Airport pilot
  Led by Cargolux, this pilot focuses on improving security procedures and testing technologies to monitor high-value cargo movements within airport cargo centres.
• Italy – Rail-road terminal pilot (Bologna)
  This pilot evaluates solutions to enhance cybersecurity and operational coordination within an intermodal freight village environment.
• Spain – Trimodal port pilot
  The pilot focuses on improving resilience and security monitoring across multimodal transport operations between Valencia and Zaragoza.

Transferability demonstrators

Two additional demonstrators explore how TRANSCEND solutions can be replicated in other environments:

• Fluvial port of Budapest (Hungary)
• Egnatia highway corridor (Greece)

These demonstrations support the transferability of the project’s methodologies across different transport infrastructures and geographical contexts.

Expected results

TRANSCEND will deliver several key outcomes to support resilience in the freight transport sector, including:

• Identification of vulnerabilities and risks affecting critical transport infrastructures
• Development of resilience plans, operational procedures and policy recommendations
• Deployment of advanced technological solutions for threat detection and risk management
• Implementation and validation of the TRANSCEND Control Tower platform
• Real-world testing of security procedures and resilience strategies across multimodal transport environments

These results will support critical infrastructure operators in preventing, resisting, absorbing and recovering from disruptive incidents.

Find out more

Project page: https://www.transcend-logistics.eu/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/showcase/transcend-project-logistics/

X: https://x.com/TRANSCENDEU_

Newsletter subscription: www.transcend-logistics.eu/contact/

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101168023