Europe is facing unprecedented challenges, such as the health, migration, economic, climate, energy, and political crises, leading to a sharp increase in emergency public spending and relaxation of due diligence checks. This has resulted in a rise in corruption and fraudulent activities, which have significant negative impacts on the European economy, society, environment, and democracy. Despite emerging technology’s potential to become a powerful tool in the fight against corruption and fraud, the public sector has been slow to adopt digitalization, resulting in data NOT being shared, harmonized, or properly analysed, making evidence-based decision-making almost impossible. Governments are slowly adopting new approaches to ensure a more data-driven, transparent, and accountable public governance, but several fundamental data-related issues remain unresolved. With a team of 9 excellent research institutions and universities, 12 technology, business, and standards, developing companies, 7 public end users, and 3 domain-relevant, industry-exposed NGOs, CEDAR will: (1) Identify, collect, fuse, harmonise, and protect complex data sources to generate and share 10+ high-quality, high-value datasets relevant for a more transparent and accountable public governance in Europe. (2) Develop interoperable and secure connectors and APIs to utilise and enrich 6+ Common European Data Spaces. (3) Develop innovative and scalable technologies for effective big data management and Machine Learning (ML) operations. (4) Deliver robust big data analytics and ML to facilitate human-centric and evidence-based decision-making in public administration. (4) Validate the new datasets and technologies (TRL5) in the context of fighting corruption, thus aligning with the EU strategic priorities: digitalisation, economy, democracy. (5) Actively promote results across Europe to ensure their adoption and longevity, and to generate positive, direct, tangible, and immediate impacts.

Europe's vast maritime domain faces challenges in situational awareness and border security due to dynamic operations and rising maritime crimes. Current surveillance technologies lack cost-efficient, wide-ranging coverage, leaving gaps in EU monitoring. MARCONNECT introduces the Vessel-Connected Services (VCS), a disruptive solution that transforms civilian vessels into active contributors to a real-time, integrated maritime surveillance network. By securely and voluntarily sharing their outward-looking sensor data (e.g., radar, sonar) with Coast Guard Authorities, civilian vessels become valuable assets in enhancing maritime situational awareness. In return, vessel owners gain access to tailored third-party services of their interest and real-time connectivity, creating a synergetic ecosystem. The main end-users of the VCS solution include Coast Guard Authorities, extending also to law enforcement agencies , who will benefit from a dynamic and scalable maritime security solution, and maritime operators across the EU, while private sector stakeholders benefit from anonymised, aggregated data insights to improve their businesses. The impact of the VCS solution is profound, resulting in a significant expansion of maritime surveillance coverage, strengthened ability to detect and respond to maritime threats, complementing existing maritime intelligence services. MARCONNECT capitalises on the trend of decreasing maritime communication costs, accelerating this shift by enabling broader and affordable access to real-time connectivity. This vision is enabled by an experienced consortium of relevant Coast Guard Authorities and Law Enforcement, key maritime industry players, and leading SMEs and RTOs with a proven track record in border security, uniquely positioned to transform Europe’s maritime security landscape and strengthen its borders

Online social networks, news media and web platforms are the way contemporary societies operate for communication, information exchange, business, co-creation, learning and knowledge acquisition . However, the veracity of information circulating in the digital world is often in dispute. Indeed, disinformation and fake news (D&FN) increasingly affect and distort public opinion. National governments and supranational institutions recognize the spread of D&FN as a pernicious social problem. Indeed, the diffusion online of D&FN may have severe consequences. First, the spread of D&FN might infuse uncertainty and fear, intensify the crisis situations, weaken the European societies aggravating their divisions. In turn, the increase in divisions and fear leads to episodes of physical violence offline and other hate crimes. As such, D&FN have the power to polarise public debates and put the health, security, and environment of EU citizens at risk. Finally, the use of fake accounts, the involvement of AI-generated fake content and the use of bots that can spread D&FN at scale pose additional problems. FERMI will exploit a holistic and cross-disciplinary methodology towards a framework that will thoroughly analyse D&FN and their sources, in combination with all the socioeconomic factors that may affect both the spreading of such incidents and their effects on multiple dimensions of society. Comprising a set of innovative technological developments, FERMI will facilitate EU Police Authorities to detect and monitor the way that D&FN spread, both in terms of locations and within different segments of the society, and to put in place relevant security countermeasures; it will produce and diffuse tailor-made training material designed for i) European Police Authorities, ii) other professionals and stakeholders, iii) EU citizens for combating the spread and limiting the impact of D&FN and increasing digital trust.

IT security and risk management often ignore or underestimate the human factor (psychological, behavioural, societal, organisational and economic aspects) in the identification of cyber-risks, their quantitative economic impact and the costs of countermeasures. Cyber-attacks can harm intangible assets like reputation, IPR, expertise, and know-how. And there is severe imbalance between the efficiency of attacks and inadequate defences, due in part to the lack of quantitative information for decision makers to prioritise security investments. To foster a culture of risk management by an individual organisation or a complete sector, HERMENEUT answers: What is the real fallout of a data compromise and the long-run consequences on associated assets? What are the losses for intangible assets? Do other type of attacks (beyond data breach) severely impact intangible and tangible assets? HERMENEUT assesses vulnerabilities of organisations and corresponding tangible and intangible assets at risk, taking into account the business plans of the attacker, the commoditisation level of the target organisations, the exposure of the target and including human factors as well as estimating the likelihood that a potential cyber-attack exploits identified vulnerabilities. HERMENEUT’s cyber-security cost-benefit approach combines integrated assessment of vulnerabilities and their likelihoods with an innovative macro- and micro-economic model for intangible costs, delivering a quantitative estimation of the risks for an organisation or a business sector and investment guidelines for mitigation measures. 11 partners from 6 countries deliver an innovative methodology and advanced macro- and micro-economic models and make it available to the European research community. HERMENEUT implements its innovations in a decision support tool, tested with 2 users in healthcare and an IPR-intensive industry.