Emergency AR Training at Critical Infrastructure: The InfraStress Project

Employees of the critical infrastructure and chemical storage terminal Attilio Carmagnani completed their first augmented reality training – a measure of the EU Horizon 2020 InfraStress project to increase the situational awareness of employees in case of emergency. Together with the consortium partners Attilio Carmagnani and STAM, Hololight further elaborated its AR training solution and received valuable feedback from end users.  

About the InfraStress Project

Critical infrastructures (CRITIS) such as the chemical storage terminal of Attilio Carmagnani are of central importance to modern society. Very high demands are placed on their operational security, as failures or impairments of CRITIS can have serious consequences. For example, terrorist or drone attacks on assets of the chemical sector could pose severe risks to public health and safety. Connected devices and cloud infrastructure create an ever-expanding surface for threats, and keeping up with security issues has become more difficult in recent years.

The Horizon 2020 project InfraStress aimed to create protection in the form of innovative technology. In a consortium of 27 partners from 11 countries led by the Italian digital transformation company Engineering SPA, the project worked on methods to improve the cyber-physical security of sensitive industrial plants and critical infrastructure in Europe. By developing an open testbed stress-testing system, the project sought ways to prevent, detect, respond to and mitigate both combined physical and cyber threats. Hololight was a consortium member and contributed its AR technology expertise to the project.

"By using augmented reality and AR headsets, we work on a better assessment of these critical and industrial environments. Via AR, operators and workers can be trained on how to clamp down on cyber-physical threats and hazards," states Alexander Werlberger, CTO at Hololight. "The collaboration with our partners Attilio Carmagnani and STAM was very enriching: we learned a lot from each other and created a very customized solution for industrial requirements."

Emergency Training with Augmented Reality

Situational awareness is crucial in case of emergency. Every action must be right. With AR personnel can be trained through real-time simulations. It prepares team members to make critical decisions on the spot and to have realistic experiences without endangering anyone.  

Irene Bonetti, Terminal Director of Attilio Carmagnani affirms: “During training we have to imagine fire or liquids. With the AR training solution on HoloLens 2 we can really see it and understand how the chemicals will behave. Also, the fact that AR trainings can be executed one-by-one multiple times helps us to prepare in a better way.”

The InfraStress Framework

The integrated InfraStress framework addressed cyber and physical threat detection in a synergic way, incorporating integrated cyber-physical situational awareness, threat intelligence, and an innovative methodology for resilience assessment — all tailored to each site. The project's 27 partners brought cross-cutting and complementary expertise to the project theme, targeting a technological readiness level from TRL4 towards TRL7.

Conclusion 

As governments and enterprises recognise the potential of improving disaster response and safety training with augmented reality, the use cases developed in InfraStress have become increasingly practical. The widespread deployment of 5G networks and the continued advancement of cloud and edge computing have made XR-based training more accessible and scalable than when this project began.

The training approach pioneered in InfraStress — step-by-step AR guidance, realistic simulation of hazardous scenarios, and repeatable individual exercises — is now available as a commercial solution. See how Hololight delivers AR-guided safety and compliance training in production environments today:

BASF AR Safety Training

Westnetz AR Training for Energy Grid Technicians