Scotland will share its experience of managing terror attacks, freak weather and other major incidents at an international conference on national resilience.
Infrastructure Secretary Keith Brown will sign an agreement to improve resilience across Europe with a network of 17 countries.
The SNP government faced an early test of its mettle when terrorists attacked Glasgow Airport just two months after the 2007 Scottish election.
Mr Brown owed his previous job as transport minister to the resignation of Stewart Stevenson amid the political outcry over the response to the severe winter of 2010, when cars were trapped overnight on the M8 motorway.
He spent several winters since camped out in Transport Scotland’s control room monitoring the impact of weather on traffic movement and safety.
Mr Brown will lead a delegation of 15 Scottish Government resilience partners attending the fifth international workshop on Regional Critical Infrastructure Resilience.
He will sign an agreement in Milan this week alongside Roberto Maroni, president of Italy’s Regione Lombardia, and Franc Weerwind, the Mayor of Velsen in the Netherlands.
Speaking ahead of the conference, Mr Brown said: “In Scotland, we take Critical Infrastructure Resilience (CIR) very seriously – we have seen over many years how our infrastructure can be impacted by a whole range of emergencies and disruptions, not least through severe weather.
We live in an ever more integrated world and when there is a major incident or systems fail, there can be a cascade effect that impacts on many regions and countries.
“So it is important that we work together to better understand the vulnerabilities and to put in place effective counter measures to mitigate the risk of failure and disruption.
“This memorandum commits the Scottish Government to sharing what we’ve learned about resilience in recent years, but also to learn from the 16 other countries involved and continue to make Scotland more resilient, safer and stronger.”
The event marks the conclusion of a two-year project looking at how regions of EU Member States and small countries can work together to prevent, prepare and protect people against security-related risks, including terrorist attacks.
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