Core Projects - Human-Machine Interaction

Modern economies are shaped by global networks of firms collaborating across national borders. The so-called Global Value Chain can be decomposed into tasks performed by firms that engage in supplier-customer relationships, which can be managed only thanks to digital technologies. In fact, digital technologies paved the way for global economic integration since the mid-'80s. Nowadays, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming essential to innovate supply chain management. According to a survey by IBM, 46% of supply chain executives anticipate that AI/cognitive computing and cloud applications will be their greatest investment areas in digital operations over the next three years.

Yet, most recently, changing geopolitical and economic scenarios show the fragility of global supply chains. The European Union elaborated the notion of an open strategic autonomy that informs many European policies, in which the resilience of supply chains is considered crucial. The need to secure strategic knowledge shared in global webs of buyer-supplier relationships is evident in the emergence of ICT services offered by private actors. Eventually, supply chains rely on a complex ecosystem of information, communications, and operational technology (ICT/OT), which entails various entities with multiple tiers of outsourcing, distribution routes, technology standards, laws, procedures, and practices that interact to design, manufacture, deploy, and maintain products and production processes on a global scale.

The aim of this project is:

- To acknowledge cyber-resilience status in Italy-based supply chains made of foreign and domestic companies often intertwined in complex webs of buyer-supplier relationships.

- To investigate the economic rationale for an organizational optimal response to cybersecurity along global supply chains with a theoretical and empirical perspective.

- To understand under which conditions a protocol can assess and mitigate cybersecurity risks while allowing for companies’ information sharing and maintaining competitive autonomy in the ICT/OT ecosystem.