In this paper, selected aspects of the national technical level of electric energy supply security is shown. An analysis and assessment of the electric power infrastructure in area of generation, transmission and distribution in aspects of electric energy security is conducted. The profile of the generation sector and grid infrastructure in the area of transmission and distribution is shown. The present and future situation in a range of operation of electric power infrastructure in the area of generation, transmission and distribution in the frames of the National Electric Power System in the electric energy supply security context is determined. The level of national electric energy supply security in area of generation and grid infrastructure is assessed. Threats of electric energy supply security are described and the catalogue of essential actions for the assurance of electric energy supply security are proposed. In the area of electricity generation, at present there is no danger to the electricity supply security in normal load conditions, but there is a high probability that it will occur in the future (after 2025) when the forecasted increase in electricity demand takes place and the new stringent environment protection requirements (Directive IED, BAT conclusions, Winter Package) enter into force. The network infrastructure in area of transmission and distribution is admittedly adapted for presently occurred typical conditions of electric energy demand and the realization of internal tasks in normal conditions, but can create a potential threat for electric energy supply security. In the context of the forecasted increase of electric energy demand, inadequate power generation sources in the National Electric Power System and available through intersystem connections, their uneven location on the territory of Poland in the shortage of proper network transmission capacities, the necessity of improvement of the quality and electric energy supply reliability to final consumers and the intensive development of renewable energy sources, the present network infrastructure in area of transmission and distribution will be insufficient.

The activity of territorial self-government shaped institutionally during the development process is characterized by a significant scope of care for the financial situation, which determines the efficiency of its functioning. The general availability of public services is a condition for the assessment of the activities of municipalities (powiats, voivodeships). Institutional economy as a real one, takes into account an integrated point of view. The aim of the study is to present the territorial differentiation of the eff ectiveness of communes’ activities in the context of institutional economics and to present the possibility of using a synthetic measure in this process. The synthetic measure of development fluctuated within the limits of 0.30 – Wąchock (Starachowice poviat, urban-rural commune) to 0.41 – Ostrowiec Św. (Ostrowiecki poviat, urban commune) in 2009, 0.32 – Łączna (Skarżysko poviat, rural commune) to 0.40 – Starachowice (Starachowice poviat, municipal commune) in 2015. The results of the analysis confirm the existence of small differences in the assessment of development communes of the Kamienna Basin. This approach allows the assessment of municipalities using one size and allows you to organize the analyzed objects in terms of the considered phenomenon.

With the increase in the mass of municipal waste generated, the demand for facilities dealing with their development is increasing. The aim of the research was to determine environmental and anthropogenic factors affecting the location of waste management facilities and an attempt to indicate potential locations for selected waste management facilities in the communes of the Sądecko-Gorlicki region. The scope of work included: a review of existing waste management facilities in the studied region, acquisition of geodatabase for digital data, analysis of the distance between the waste management facilities and environmental or anthropogenic elements, and analysis of potential locations designated in the GIS based on the developed criteria.As a result of spatial analyzes, it was found that in the study area, there are 3 places of potentiallocations for installation of municipal solid waste treatment facilities.

The process of designing and creating an integrated distributed information system for storing digitized works of scientists of research institutes of the Almaty academic city is analyzed. The requirements for the storage of digital objects are defined; a comparative analysis of the open source software used for these purposes is carried out. The system fully provides the necessary computing resources for ongoing research and educational processes, simplifying the prospect of its further development, and allows to build an advanced IT infrastructure for managing intellectual capital, an electronic library that is intended to store all books and scientific works of the Kazakhstan Engineering Technological University and research institutes of the Almaty academic city.

Particular diligence in the preparation of documentation and conducting a tender procedure for construction works must be made by public contracting entities, who are subject to additional restrictions. In Poland, the largest public contracting entities are the sectoral ones. These are the entities (defined in Art. 3 of the Public Procurement Law Act) operating in the sectors of water management, energy, transport and postal services. The paper presents the analysis of tender offers for the execution of construction works or design and execution of construction works related to the reconstruction, construction and revitalization of railway lines, announced after the amendment to the Public Procurement Law on June 22, 2016. The considered examples are selected tender procedures covering the scope of construction and assembly works on railway lines throughout the country. The authors paid particular attention to the tender criteria applied and the requirements for the potential contractors for works in the field of railway infrastructure.

Polish energy security is currently one of the key elements affecting the national security system. Maintaining operational efficiency and the permanent modernization of both, power plants, as well as transformer stations and transmission networks is a starting point of ensuring energy security in our country. This is a significant challenge, taking into account the age of the energy critical infrastructure elements in Poland, as well as the permanent increase of the demand for electricity. This implies a systematic growth of the importance of the issue the country’s energy security. The numerous events and anomalies that accompany our everyday life, such as the storms that passed over Poland on the night of August 11–12, 2017, indicate the considerable sensitivity of the critical energy infrastructure on the impact of various negative factors. The security of Polish critical infrastructure connected with the distribution of electricity is particularly at risk. Therefore, it is desirable not only for current repairs and the modernization of the power system elements, but also for the work related to adapting the infrastructure to current and even forecasted needs, challenges and threats. In the face of the presented research results, the reconstruction of the Polish power system, as well as the implementation of innovative solutions in the production, transmission and distribution of energy seems to be unavoidable. Therefore interdisciplinary research and analyses are recommended, allowing the level security of the critical infrastructure to be increased through the best possible diagnosis of factors that may even slightly threaten this security.

Blue infrastructure is not only an element related to rainwater retention in a city but also a factor shaping urban space. As a result of the impact of blue infrastructure on form, function and character of urban space, a unique space is created – an urban blue space. The subject of the article is associated with the blue infrastructure on shape and character of urban spaces, as well as water-land spatial relations within urban blue space. Author of the article analised spatial relations occurring in port cities between aquatic and terrestrial space from perspective of the land, but also water, which is an equally important part of city’s area. As a result models of two-dimensional water-land relations have been recognised and described.

The paper concerns a risk assessment and management methodology in critical infrastructures. The aim of the paper is to present researches on risk management within the experimentation tool based on the OSCAD software. The researches are focused on interdependent infrastructures where the specific phenomena, like escalating and cascading effects, may occur. The objective of the researches is to acquire knowledge about risk issues within interdependent infrastructures, to assess the usefulness of the OSCAD-based risk manager in this application domain, and to identify directions for further R&D works. The paper contains a short introduction to risk management in critical infrastructures, presents the state of the art, and the context, plan and scenarios of the performed validation experiments. Next, step by step, the validation is performed. It encompasses two collaborating infrastructures (railway, energy). It is shown how a hazardous event impacts the given infrastructure (primary and secondary eects) and the neighbouring infrastructure. In the conclusions the experiments are summarized, the OSCAD software assessed and directions of the future works identified.

The paper presents a concept of the vehicle/road infrastructure in vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication for tagging and informing vehicles about the surrounded environment. A frame analysis and the influence of the data packet size on Ultra-wideband (UWB) were investigated. The authors have determined the distance that could be traveled by a vehicle at the given speed in relation to the amount of data that has to be transmitted during the ranging procedure. The authors propose a data frame format (using the IEEE 802.15.4a protocol) for coding/encoding the information about the road infrastructure efficiently during the positioning procedure. It affects to minimum the time that is required to exchange messages during the ranging and communication process. The whole system is an efficient and reliable element that enhances/extends the existing components of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), which will facilitate validation of the information obtained from devices such as lidar, radar or video. The impact of the transmitted payload to the distance traveled by car opens the door to future research on the possibility of implementing efficient vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication for autonomous driving or and other smart city solutions.

The article presents a new optimization tool supporting supply chain management in the multi-criteria aspect. This tool was implemented in the EPLOS system (European Logistics Services Portal system). The EPLOS system is an integrated IT system supporting the process of creating a supply and distribution network in supply chains. This system consists of many modules e.g. optimization module which are responsible for data processing, generating results. The main objective of the research was to develop a system to determine the parameters of the supply chain, which affect its efficiency in the process of managing the goods flow between individual links in the chain. These parameters were taken into account in the mathematical model as decision variables in order to determine them in the optimization process. The assessment of supply chain management effectiveness was carried out on the basis of the global function of the criterion consisting of partial functions of the criteria described in the mathematical model. The starting point for the study was the assumption that the effectiveness of chain management is determined by two important decision-making problems that are important for managers in the supply chain management process, i.e. the problem of assigning vehicles to tasks and the problem of locating logistics facilities in the supply chain. In order to solve the problem, an innovative approach to the genetic algorithm was proposed, which was adapted to the developed mathematical model. The correctness of the genetic algorithm has been confirmed in the process of its verification.

Underground gas storage facilities play an important part in the maintenance of balance between the constantly imported raw material and variable gas demand in the discussed part of Europe. They also allow for more the efficient operation of businesses which exploit this raw material in this part of Europe and operators of power lines.

The following issues will be discussed in the article: types, capacity, location and variability of the filling level of underground gas storage facilities in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia; similarities and differences in the policy of natural gas storage between individual Visegrad Group countries; the influence of these differences on the situation in the gas market; the influence of the planned further reconstruction of the natural gas storage facilities system on the energy security of individual countries which belong to the Visegrad Group.

Concern for UGSF is one of the conditions of expansion of transmission pipelines to the north and south, increase of LNG import within the Visegrad Group, or the creation of a gas hub in Poland – initiatives aimed at, among others, securing the continuity of supplies to domestic users.

However, the current and planned investments indirectly indicate that in the policies of the governments of the Visegrad Group countries, UGSF are supposed to soon play a much smaller role than many researchers would expect. An intensive expansion of UGSF is very unlikely. The scale of the state’s effect on the role of storage facilities in supplying gas to users depends on the level of the state’s control over the companies managing UGSF.