VIDEO | The G7 engineer: “I’ll tell you about the Capri summit and how it didn’t stop as an island”

Interviewed by Dire Ciro Cannelonga, CEO of Polis Consulting, a company specializing in safety and predictive security for complex infrastructures

ROME – Life did not stop in Capri during the G7 days, from 17 to 19 April. Polis Consulting engineers coordinated the ‘safety’ of the structures that hosted the summit. “The eyes of the world were focused on Italy. We supported the sharing table between all the functions involved, developed an emergency forecast model and through our algorithms it was possible to size the management measures for the host structures.< /p>

This is the cutting-edge emergency management that allowed Capri to maintain its usual face during the intense and high-tension days of the G7″. Ciro Cannelonga, CEO of Polis Consulting, a company, explained this to Dire. specialized in safety and forecasting security for complex infrastructures, which has implemented an emergency management system based on the use of algorithms that allow us to develop concrete, implementable emergency forecasting plans that are simple to disseminate.

“We are among the best countries in the world in emergency management – recalls the engineer – but we must make an extra effort in prevention and have forecasting models that contemplate all possible scenarios”. The CEO of Polis spent the three days of the Summit in the control room together with the bodies responsible for safety and control: “The safety forecast plan is the basis for safety: we have drawn up one for the Grand hotel Quisisana, headquarters of the works, then for the Congress Center home to the media center and for the areas of the Municipality of Capri involved in major events”.

The first step was to “build the matrix of needs, verify what was possible to do in compliance with current legislation, predict crowding, size the escape routes, verify the full accessibility of the places and draw up emergency plans for scenarios predictable. What is normally defined as unpredictable can simply be the combination or summation – recalls the CEO of Polis – of predictable but not foreseen scenarios. We have models based on algorithms from which we extract easily applicable documents”. p>

Polis’ work subsequently focused on ‘zoning’: “With the collaboration of all the institutional functions involved, the red zone was reduced to a minimum, essentially on the perimeter of the Grand hotel Quisisana” and, explains the expert, “checks at defined checkpoints and alternative routes identified” were set up. So the jewel island did not stop and for tourists and citizens life went on as normal. “People at the end of the event were like, ‘Is it over yet?'”

The Capri model worked and represented that extra effort to make so that when the safety bar is raised, life doesn’t stop. Is it all down to the algorithm? It’s not enough, the tool makes “the actions and mitigation measures easily intelligible, but the difference is always made by the competence of the women and men of the institutions, I spent the three days of the Summit in close contact with the people dedicated to security” , recalls Cannelonga, at the coordination, between phone calls, control of the systems and the most delicate moments of the summit: “It was an extraordinary experience”.