Tasks of the working group 5.1.1 – Safety design principles
The working group develops safety-related aspects that are fundamentally and interdisciplinarity relevant to the field of hydrogen technologies. Principles and general principles for the safe design of products are defined, as well as specific requirements regarding functional safety. These will provide manufacturers and processors with a reliable basis for their work and users of the products with a basic level of confidence on which to work and act.

The working group is to determine the extent to which safety-related interfaces exist between the branches and which principles and standards must be considered in this area. The working group will also assess whether and to what extent there is a need for further standards.

Tasks of the working group 5.1.2 – Cyber security and data interfaces
The topic of cybersecurity is already considered holistically in many industries. This means that all participants in the hydrogen value chain must make their contribution. All companies have an IT infrastructure which must of course be secured according to its tasks and criticality (ISO/IEC 27000 and others). In the process industry, among others, automated and networked control technology, so-called operational technology (OT), has been increasingly used for many years. This OT infrastructure must also be secured according to its tasks and criticality (IEC 62443). The merging of both infrastructures (IT and OT) results not only in efficiency and synergy effects, but also in the need for a holistic view of cyber security, as otherwise there will be "gaps" and thus points of attack for cyber-attacks. In terms of the future hydrogen industry and infrastructure, this means first and foremost building on existing norms and standards regarding cyber security and expanding them to include specific challenges. For hydrogen as a future part of the critical infrastructure "energy", there are numerous regulatory requirements (IT-SIG) that are already being met today through the application of norms and standards.

Tasks of the working group 5.1.3 – Explosion protection
Hydrogen will play a key role in many areas of the future energy system and will encounter existing systems such as heating applications, filling stations, industrial applications, electricity production and storage, especially in the field of application. There has already been experience in explosion protection for decades with hydrogen for industrial applications. Due to the national and European hydrogen strategy, new and broad applications are added, which are accessible to laymen to a certain extent. This may result in additions and changes to the relevant safety-related standards. To integrate hydrogen safely and resiliently into existing systems, it is important to take a special look at the systems and applications against the background of explosion protection. This working group is concerned with whether there are any standardization gaps with the newly added areas of application. A close exchange is planned with all relevant working groups in the standardization roadmap. This means that experts from all areas, e.g. electrolysis, fuel cells, shipping, rail, are invited to share their expertise from their specialist areas with the explosion protection experts.

Tasks of the working group 5.1.4 – Safety and integrity management
The "Safety and Integrity Management" working group deals with technical rules that define processes and procedures for the safe operation of plants and infrastructures for hydrogen technologies

The working group deals with the necessary technical rules for the certification of products. The perspective of the notified bodies and their requirements and needs for technical regulation are considered here.

Specialists and companies in the field of hydrogen technologies will be defined. Also under discussion are possible technical rules for defining continuing education training to create a common basis. The ramp-up of the hydrogen economy offers the opportunity to develop uniform training standards in parallel with the emerging technical and regulatory standards. In this way, it is possible to ensure safe handling and operation of this topic, which is associated with numerous opportunities but also potential hazards. Based on numerous sectoral experiences, some of which have been gathered over decades (in the chemical industry, for example), it makes sense to develop a universal "hydrogen" safety curriculum and to anchor it internationally.