Projects

First responders are the groups of people, services and organisations with specialised skills and qualifications whose duty is to arrive first to the emergency zone, search, save and rescue operations, and perform crisis management in natural or human-made disasters. Although first responders provide secure and safe societies by protecting the communities, responding to the disasters and rescuing lives, they often use inefficient, weak and obsolete technologies in the operations.

With respect to the current situation, the operational capabilities of the first responders can be dramatically boosted by the advances in technology and engineering fields such as smart sensor systems, wearables, data processing, data fusion, data analytics, communication infrastructure, and artificial intelligence tools. The main objective of TeamAware Project is to develop an integrated and cost-efficient situational awareness system for first responders from different sectors with heterogeneous and hardly interoperable sensor units including drone mounted, wearable, and external sensor systems, existing first responder services, and operation centres. The purpose is to enhance crisis management, flexibility and reaction capability of first responders of different sectors through real-time, fused, refined, filtered, and manageable information by using highly-standardized augmented reality and mobile human machine interfaces.

Website: https://teamaware.eu/

With the evolving threat of climate change and the consequences of industrial accidents to becoming more severe, there is an increasing need for First Responders to access reliable and agile information management systems that offer as higher Situational Awareness and better Common Operational Picture. To match with current trends, the RESPOND-A project aims at developing holistic and easy-to-use solutions for First Responders by bringing together the complementary strengths of its Investigators in 5G wireless communications, Augmented and Virtual Reality, autonomous robot and unmanned aerial vehicle coordination, intelligent wearable sensors and smart monitoring, geovisual analytics and immersive geospatial data analysis, passive and active localisation and tracking, and interactive multi-view 360o video streaming. The synergy of such cutting-edge technological advancements is likely to provide high-end and continuous flows of data, voice and video information to First Responders and their Command & Control Centres for predicting and assessing the various incidents readily and reliably, and saving lives more efficiently and effectively, while maximising the safeguarding of themselves, before, during and after disasters. To this end, RESPOND-A envisions at exercising First Responders for getting familiar with the project technological outcomes, and demonstrating their real-world performance and effectiveness in the classified training facilities of our Responder Partners under hydrometeorological, geophysical and technological disaster scenarios.

Website: https://respond-a-project.eu/

ISOLA project combines state-of-the-art technologies blended with novel solutions to enhance the Situational Awareness and support the assigned Ship Security Officer & Crew to the execution of their duties especially to the Ship Security Plan. The suggested system is contextually aligned and harmonised with the existing regulations. Constraints to integration will also be looked at with attention given to key architecture framework criteria: standardisation, interoperability, openness, flexibility, adaptability, ability to evolve, scalability, modularity, simplicity, usability, robustness, information management, decision support and mission effectiveness, and legacy integration. ISOLA develops, integrates, tests, deploys, demonstrates and validates a systematic and fully automated security approach by incorporating innovative technologies for sensing, monitoring, data fusion, alarming and reporting real-time during illegal incidents. This will ensure high level of security among all the passengers of the ship and augmentation of the Ship Security Plan. The main objectives of ISOLA are: (i) to create strategies and methods in order to a ship to easily integrated solutions regarding passengers and crew safety in the existing ship systems; (ii) to propose innovative sensor and visual technologies to support security safety; (iii) to create a complex collaborative system for monitoring and detecting security incidents and events; (iv) to create early warning methods for the ship security crew to prevent security issues; (v) to collect incident evidences by exploiting the Augmented Reality; (vi) to allow easy engagement of different authorities in a ship related crisis; (vii) to model, classify and easily report a security event.

Website: https://isola-project.eu/

Emergency Medical Services in Europe are characterised by a pluralistic landscape with diverse organisational setups, professional standards, coordination mechanisms and actors which result from different historical and institutional contexts in EU member states. However, diversity is united by the common aim, of providing timely care to victims of sudden and life-threatening injuries, emergencies or disasters within EU-member states (EUMS), in cross-border settings and international humanitarian missions. Fostering the response capacities and increasing the cooperation of the European Emergency Medical Services Systems (EMSS) is of decisive importance for strengthening the resilience of European societies in the light of multiple hazards: Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of disasters, terrorism is becoming a very real scenario for mass causality events challenging both out-of-hospital as well as in-hospital emergency care, and health related hazards are calling for close cooperation of public safety and health authorities on an international level. Not only hazards but also the system’s diversity poses a challenge for preparedness planning and cooperation, which needs to involve the whole EMS system at regional and/or national level and integrate it into the whole health system and fully coordinate with the public safety system to be effective. The iProcureSecurity project seeks to identify the major challenges the system’s diversity poses to the ability to work together, stimulate R&I uptake with a view to increasing standardisation of operations across Europe, and deliver technical requirements for R&I activities to create a European system of Medical Emergency Teams that is more homogeneous and capable to work as singly unit. To achieve this aim, the project will engage in several exchange cycles with practitioners and other stakeholders in the innovation landscape as a preparation for major R&I activities as part of a PCP action.

Website: https://pcp.iprocuresecurity.eu/

The smart energy ecosystem constitutes the next technological leap of the conventional electrical grid, providing multiple benefits such as increased reliability, better service quality and efficient utilization of the existing infrastructures. However, despite the fact that it brings beneficial environmental, economic and social changes, it also generates significant security and privacy challenges, as it includes a combination of heterogeneous, co-existing smart and legacy technologies. Based on this reality, the SDN-microSENSE project intends to provide a set of secure, privacy-enabled and resilient to cyberattacks tools, thus ensuring the normal operation of EPES as well as the integrity and the confidentiality of communications. In particular, adopting an SDN-based technology, SDN-microSENSE will develop a three-layer security architecture, by deploying and implementing risk assessment processes, self-healing capabilities, large-scale distributed detection and prevention mechanisms, as well as an overlay privacy protection framework. Firstly, the risk assessment framework will identify the risk level of each component of EPES, identifying the possible threats and vulnerabilities. Accordingly, in the context of self-healing, islanding schemes and energy management processes will be deployed, isolating the critical parts of the network in the case of emergency. Furthermore, collaborative intrusion detection tools will be capable of detecting and preventing possible threats and anomalies timely. Finally, the overlay privacy protection framework will focus on the privacy issues, including homomorphic encryption and anonymity processes

Website: https://www.sdnmicrosense.eu/

ROBORDER aims at developing and demonstrating a fully-functional autonomous border surveillance system with unmanned mobile robots including aerial, water surface, underwater and ground vehicles which will incorporate multimodal sensors as part of an interoperable network. Our intention is to implement a heterogenous robot system and enhance it with detection capabilities for early identification of criminal activities at border and coastal areas along with marine pollution events.

Website: https://roborder.eu/

Maritime Domain Awareness is the combination of activities, events and threats in the maritime environment that could have impact on marine activities and EU territory. During the past decades, advances in Information and Communication Technologies have provided better means to monitor and analyse vessel activity. Today private and public source of data such the Automatic Identification System or space related data can be combined with Vessel Traffic Services, Vessel Traffic Management Systems and Vessel Traffic Monitoring & Information Systems data enabling the development of value added information resulted by the combination of such data.

European waters are navigated daily by some 12,000 vessels, which share their positions to avoid collisions, generating a huge number of positional messages every month. It is important that this overabundance of information will not overwhelm the marine operator in charge for decision-making. The challenge is twofold: on one side encourage the exchange of heterogeneous data among administration valorising the CISE network currently in place, on the other exploit at the best these datasets by means of automated processing in a way to minimise false alert that might results by an incorrect processing or interpretation of the results.

PROMENADE will improve solutions for the vessel tracking, behaviour analysis and automatic anomaly detection by means of the application Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data (BD) technologies, and to promote collaborative exchange of information between maritime surveillance authorities, shortening the time to market and assuring the compliance with legal and ethical regulations.

An open, service-based toolkit implementing “state of art” AI / BD techniques also benefiting of HPC (High Performance Computing) platform is the core activity of the project. The project’s developments will be demonstrated and evaluated in 3 operational scenarios and 1 simulated defined by Border Guards Authorities.

Website: https://www.promenade-project.eu/

ARESIBO is an innovative system for improved situation awareness in the border security domain. ARESIBO focuses on the operational and tactical layers by covering a wide range of multipurpose borderland operational tasks and coast guard functions including border surveillance and area examination, patrolling and tasking, situational awareness, analysis of potential threats, search and rescue activities, joint planning of field operations. The envisaged platform addresses the problem of providing enhanced and integrated situation awareness to the operational personnel acting in-situ and in the C2 control more border by developing (a) intuitive and user-friendly interfaces for border security tools, (b) cloud-based decision-support services and tools for field and C2 operators, and (c) the needed communication infrastructure to accomplish border control and security tasks. ARESIBO technical solution is based on three technology pillars. 

ARESIBO considers the use of all types of unmanned systems, namely Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) that can meet the operational requirements of different border security missions and have the potential to lead and autonomously accomplish difficult and dangerous operations, limiting man losses and operational costs significantly. 

The top priorities of ARESIBO will be scientific excellence and technological innovation. It will enhance the current state-of-the-art through technological breakthroughs in Mobile Augmented Reality and Wearables, Robust and Secure Telecommunications, Swarm Robotics and Planning of Context-Aware Autonomous Missions, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), in order to implement user-friendly tools for border and coast guards. The system will improve the cognitive capabilities and the perception of border guards through intuitive user interfaces, will help them acquire a clear and more accurate understanding of the current conditions by filtering the huge amount of available information stemming from multiple sources and, ultimately, will help them respond fast and effectively when a critical situation takes place.

Website: https://www.aresibo.eu/

CDE4Peace will explore the potential of Concept Development and Experimentation (CDE) for enhancing the EU’s conflict prevention and peace-building policy. CDE is seen as a promising tool for the transformation of complex security systems - especially in NATO context - but its potential for EU policies hasn’t yet been investigated. The project therefore will assess the applicability and compatibility of the CDE methodology and tools with strategic and operational concepts in the area of EU conflict prevention and peace-building (CPPB). Furthermore, the project will introduce and adapt CDE to EU CPPB by defining the requirements for an innovative CDE tool tailored for this specific policy area. Finally, the project will define actionable policy recommendations for implementing the CDE methodology and tools in the complex EU policy-making process.

The project will employ an interdisciplinary methodology for applied policy research which links qualitative research methods from Conflict and Peace studies with quantitative CDE tools. This innovative research methodology follows a four-phase operational logic: 1) Concept review and quantification; 2) Technology assessment of CDE tools; 3) Definition of requirements for an innovative CDE tool; and 4) Policy recommendations for integrating the CDE methodology in the EU decision-making. The project will clearly contribute to the European Research Area by linking the academic and policy analysis on EU conflict prevention and peace-building with experimental research and CDE in particular. As a Marie Skłodowska-Curie action, it will also enhance the potential of the experienced researcher by a carefully-designed international and intersectoral mobility.

In general, the project’s research and innovation objectives are highly relevant for the current developments in the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) which forms the political framework of EU conflict prevention and peace-building.

Website: https://www.cde4peace.eu/

Adapted Situation AwareneSS tools and taIlored training scenarios for increaSing capabiliTies and enhANcing the proteCtion of First RespondErs – ASSISTANCE is an international research project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme in Secure Societies Challenge addressing the SU-DRS02-2018-2019-2020 (Technologies for first responders) topic.

The main purpose of ASSISTANCE project is twofold: to help and protect different kind of first responders’ (FR) organizations that work together during the mitigation of large disasters (natural or man-made) and to enhance their capabilities and skills for facing complex situations related to different types of incidents.

This will be achieved by accomplishing the following operational objectives:

O1. To address the FRs expressed needs and preferences in terms of useful information for increasing their capabilities and new sensors mounted on unmanned platforms or integrated in their wearable equipment.

O2. To develop a novel SA platform, including the integration of UAV, Robots and drones’ swarms and innovative modules, able to be adapted to the specific information needs of the different types of FRs organizations that cooperate during the response to a large disaster (natural or man-made)

O3. To establish the core of an advanced training network based on Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR) along with a set of training curricula tailored to the needs of the different types of first responders (e.g. firefighters, sanitary staff, police, etc.) and characteristics of the type of incident.

O4. To provide a robust network infrastructure for ensuring FRs and unmanned platforms connectivity during the mitigation operations and alternative ad-hoc network capabilities based on drones’ swarm for ensuring the basic sensors and modules connection.

O5. To validate the project results in a cost effective way under real conditions in a controlled environment through 3 pilot demonstrations which will involve FRs from different organizations.

O6. To measure the societal impact of the project and assure compliance with legal, gender and ethical EU principles and requirements, identify lacunae and hurdles and develop concrete recommendations to policy makers and FRs with the aim to improve the current level of protection for the FRs and increase their capabilities in a legal and ethical manner.

Website: https://assistance-project.eu/

The main goal of the PROACTIVE project is to enhance preparedness against and response to a CBRNe incident through a better harmonisation of procedures between various categories of practitioners, and a better understanding of the needs of vulnerable citizen groups. Click on the PROACTIVE leaflet for more information.

Objectives:

IDENTIFY behavioural issues associated with responding to a CBRNe incident and potential shortcomings in existing practitioner procedures and tools with respect to vulnerable groups.

IMPROVE real-time communication and collaboration with the use of new tools such as mobile apps for better situational awareness and better response coordination.

TEST combinations of selected tools in joint field exercises which deliberately involve a diverse population that encompasses vulnerable citizens and non-trained staff.

PROVIDE human-centred recommendations for EU standards concerning the integration of CBRNe technologies and innovations that are better adapted to the needs of all citizens.

Website: https://proactive-h2020.eu/

For the past few years, Europe has experienced some major changes at its surrounding territories and in adjacent countries which provoked serious issues at different levels. The European Community faces a number of challenges both at a political and at a tactical level. Irregular migration flows exerting significant pressure to the relevant authorities and agencies that operate at border territories. Armed conflicts, climate pressure and unpredictable factors occurring at the EU external borders, have increased the number of the reported transnational crimes. Smuggling activity is a major concern for Eastern EU Borders particularly, as monitoring the routes used by smugglers is being hindered by mountainous, densely forested areas and rough lands aside with sea or river areas. Due to the severity and the abrupt emergence of events, the relevant authorities operate for a long-time interval, under harsh conditions, 24 hours a day. NESTOR aims to demonstrate a fully functional next generation holistic border surveillance system providing pre-frontier situational awareness beyond maritime and land border areas following the concept of the European Integrated Border Management. NESTOR long-range and wide area surveillance capabilities for detection, recognition classification and tracking of moving targets (e.g. persons, vessels, vehicles, drones etc.) is based on optical, thermal imaging and Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum analysis technologies fed by an interoperable sensors network including stationary installations and mobile manned or unmanned vehicles (aerial, ground, water, underwater) capable of functioning both as standalone, tethered and in swarms. NESTOR BC3i system will fuse in real-time border surveillance data combined with web and social media information, creating and sharing a pre-frontier intelligent picture to local, regional and national command centers in AR environment being interoperable with CISE and EUROSUR.

Website: https://nestor-project.eu/

Exposure of citizens to potential disasters has led to vulnerable societies that require risk reduction measures. Drinking water is one main source of risk when its safety and security is not ensured. aqua3S combines novel technologies in water safety and security, aiming to standardise existing sensor technologies complemented by state-of-the-art detection mechanisms. On the one hand sensor networks are deployed in water supply networks and sources, supported by complex sensors for enhanced detection; on the other hand sensor measurements are supported by videos from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), satellite images and social media observations from the citizens that report low-quality water in their area (e.g. by colorisation), creating also social awareness and an interactive knowledge transfer. Semantic representation and data fusion provides intelligent DSS alerts and messages to the public through first responders’ mediums. The proposed technical solution is designed to offer a very effective detection system, taking into account the cost of the aqua3S platform and targets at very high return over investment ratio. A strategy for the insertion of aqua3S solution into the market is designed towards the standardisation of the proposed technologies and the aqua3S secure platform.

Website: https://aqua3s.eu/

A methodology for tracking and analysing the needs for standardization and certification harmonization thorough the project life cycle will be defined and enforced, which will allow the early identification of issues related to the conceptualization, design, implementation, integration and deployment of tools for support the EU disaster resiliency; which will be facilitated by a complete consultation strategy to the different stakeholders that are expected to act at each capability development phase, ranging from providers to end users. On these grounds H2020-VALKYRIES will develop, integrate and demonstrate capabilities for enabling immediate and coordinated emergency response including search and rescue, security and health, in scenarios of natural/provoked catastrophes with multiple victims, with special application in cases in which several regions or countries are affected and hence greater interoperability being required. H2020-VALKYRIES will propose both design and development of a modular, interoperable, scalable and secure platform, which will allow the integration between legacy solutions and new technologies. The platform will be able to deploy services and dynamically adapt its behaviour, as the emergency requires it. A series of use cases and demonstrators will be developed placing an emphasis on cross-frontier and cross-sectorial BLOS (Beyond Line of Sight) scenarios, where the usual communications infrastructure could have been damaged, and emergency response teams are deployed without an accurate view of the operation environment.

Website: https://www.valkyries-h2020.eu/index.html

CREST’s overall objective is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of LEAs intelligence, operation, and investigation capabilities, through the automated detection, identification, assessment, fusion, and correlation of evidence acquired from heterogeneous multimodal data streams. Such data streams include (but are not limited to) Surface/Deep/Dark Web and social media sources and interactions, IoT-enabled devices (including wearable sensors), surveillance cameras (static, wearable, or mounted on UxVs), and seized devices and hard disks.

CREST will achieve this objective by developing an innovative prediction, prevention, operation, and investigation platform that will build upon the concept of multidimensional integration and correlation of heterogeneous multimodal data streams and delivery of pertinent information to different stakeholders in an interactive manner tailored to their needs.

Website: https://project-crest.eu/

The FORESIGHT project aims to develop a federated cyber-range solution to enhance the preparedness of cybersecurity professionals at all levels and advance their skills towards preventing, detecting, reacting and mitigating sophisticated cyber-attacks. This is achieved by delivering an ecosystem of networked realistic training and simulation platforms that collaboratively bring unique cyber-security aspects from the aviation, smart grid and naval domains.

The proposed platform will extend the capabilities of existing cyber-ranges and will allow the creation of complex cross-domain/hybrid scenarios to be built jointly with the IoT domain. Emphasis is given on the design and implementation of realistic and dynamic scenarios that are based on identified and forecasted trends of cyberattacks and vulnerabilities extracted from cyber-threat intelligence gathered from the dark web; this will enable cybersecurity professionals to rapidly adapt to an evolving threat landscape.

The development of advanced risk analysis and econometric models will prove to be valuable in estimating the impact of cyber-risks, selecting the most appropriate and affordable security measures, and minimising the cost and time to recover from cyber-attacks. Innovative training curricula, guiding cyber-security professionals to implement and combine security measures using new technologies and established learning methodologies, will be created and employed for training needs; they will be linked to professional certification programs and be supported by learning platforms.

Aside from the development of skills, the project aims at a holistic approach to cyber-threat management with the ultimate goal of cultivating a strong security culture. As such, the project puts considerable emphasis on research and development (i.e. research on cyber-threats, development of novel ideas, etc.) as the key to increasing training dynamics and awareness methods for exceeding the rate of evolution of cyber-attackers.

Website: https://foresight-h2020.eu/

ODYSSEUS aims to increase the knowledge on explosive precursors and homemade explosives (HMEs), including precursors not previously studied, and develop effective and efficient prognostic, detection, and forensic tools to improve the capabilities of LEAs towards the prevention, countering, and investigation of terrorist incidents involving HMEs. ODYSSEUS will build upon relevant previous projects mainly HOMER, through the involvement ofHOMER’s core partners in this consortium, and will thus continue the work already done in HOMER on some precursors and further extend it to not previously studied precursors.

To discover potentially hitherto unknown information, online HMEs recipes will be collected and their content will be analysed so as to extract knowledge about (possibly unknown) precursors and HMEs. Selected precursors will be then characterisedand analysed for determining their explosive properties, feasibility, and potential for becoming a threat.This knowledge will be leveraged for developing tools for(i) chemical supply chain monitoring for irregularity detection to enable prediction and localisation of potential threats; (ii) advanced sensors for detecting in (near) real-time explosive precursors through air emissions and sewerage networks; (iii) robotised tools for improved mobile detection and in-situ forensic support; and (iv) automated threat detection, localisation, and assessment; these tools will be integrated into a configurable platform that will assist LEAs’ operations in diverse scenarios.

ODYSSEUS will be validated in lab and field tests and demonstrations in three operational use cases. Extensive training of LEAs' personnel, hands-on experience, joint exercises, and training material will boost the uptake of ODYSSEUS tools and technologies. With a Consortium of 4 LEAs, 9 Research/Academic partners, and 5 industry partners, ODYSSEUS delivers a strong representation of the challenges, requirements and tools to meet its objectives.

Website: https://odysseus-h2020.eu/

The European Commission has, under the H2020 Program, brought together specialist expertise to form four pilot projects with the objective of connecting and sharing knowledge across multiple domains to develop a common cybersecurity strategy for Europe. ECHO (the European network of Cybersecurity centres and competence Hub for innovation and Operations) is one of these four projects. The ECHO consortium consists of 30 partners from different fields and sectors including health, transport, manufacturing, ICT, education, research, telecom, energy, space, healthcare, defence & civil protection.

The main objective of ECHO is to strengthen the proactive cyber defence of the European Union, enhancing Europe’s technological sovereignty through effective and efficient multi-sector and multi-domain collaboration. The project will develop a European Cybersecurity ecosystem, to support secure cooperation and development of the European market, as well as to protect the citizens of the European Union against cyber threats and incidents.

Website: https://echonetwork.eu/

Situational Awareness and Alarming is a software component  that fuses information from multiple heterogeneous sensors (including ground and airborne), thus reducing cognitive load on the operators. Fusing information from multiple heterogeneous sensors also enables information cross-checking and filtering in order to reduce information overload and hence decrease false alarm rate.

This feature helps border guards to fill the gaps they currently face in their daily activities by having to monitor and operate a large number of independent sensors; needing to browse independent streams of information from the different sensors and managing uncorrelated information to try to act on the spot. Situational Awareness and Alarming is a software component  that fuses information from multiple heterogeneous sensors (including ground and airborne), thus reducing cognitive load on the operators. Fusing information from multiple heterogeneous sensors also enables information cross-checking and filtering in order to avoid information overload of the operator and also to decrease false alarm rate.

Website: https://foldout.eu/