Technological advances and development of sophisticated functions in mobile devices led to new usages and dependencies. Mobile phones are often a key factor in criminal cases, intrusions, intellectual property theft, security threats, and more. The data stored in these devices may contain critical evidence associated with the above-mentioned crimes. The latest generation of devices incorporate new security features and encryption schemes to "protect" the device and its associated user data. The other side of the coin is that the rapid processing of critical evidence by various information retrieval techniques is slowed down, if not made impossible. The mobile device forensics field is a challenging area for forensic analysts, particularly given the increasing number of data encryption mechanisms. The EXFILES project aims to provide law enforcement agencies (LEAs) with new tools to extract data and associated evidence from these devices in strict legal contexts. A unique consortium of five LEAs, universities and cyber security companies from the EU have joined forces to address these challenges. Together, they defined three areas of work on technical data extraction techniques, namely software exploitation, hardware methods and combined methods. In addition, tools and methods inspired by other areas of information security (e.g. security assessments based on common criteria) will lead to new judicial methods of accessing data for lawful investigations. Another unique dimension of EXFILES is the clear focus on the ethical and legal aspects of research and exploitation as well as dissemination and training activities for the next generation of forensic experts. The main objective of EXFILES project is to improve Law Enforcement Agencies techniques and methods, to extract digital evidence from modern encrypted smartphones used by criminals based on holistic approach (both software and hardware).

Preventing and fighting illicit material and dangerous substances postal and courier services flows in EU areas is of top priority. However, ensuring efficiency, speed and continuity in screening and detection tasks remains yet a challenge. Currently, custom, police and courier authorities involve a range of screening systems in place but there is still much to do in terms of detection efficacy and creation of intelligence towards risk and threat identification. On top of that, criminals or smugglers exploit the multitude of flows and easily spot security gaps that allow parcels or letters to be transported within or across EU with relative ease. To overcome these constraints, iFLOWS proposes a unique approach to assist customs, police and postal/courier services in preventing and detecting such crimes by improving operational readiness, enhancing situation awareness, reducing detection time, providing operational efficiency and achieving superior mission performance. iFLOWS will design, develop, integrate, test and validate a novel multi-tier synergistic Toolkit in enhancing intelligence extraction, screening and detection operations of illicit material and hazardous substances within courier and postal flows moving across and within EU borders. iFLOWS works upon these 3 building blocks to deliver a) a tailored to such operations C4I that boosts preparedness and cooperation be-tween police, customs and courier/postal services, b) enhanced Intelligence in terms of threats, risks and suspicious flows and c) novel detection technologies (i.e. THz Scanning system and UWB Scanner) featuring enhanced detection capabilities over a large span of illicit material and substances, which, coupled with advanced image-based feature extraction in combination to legacy systems (e.g. X-Ray and Raman) optimise the detection process without interrupting the postal/courier flows.

Effective EU support to a large external crisis requires new approaches. In response to this challenge and to identified user and market needs from previous projects, Reaching Out proposes an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that will optimize the efforts, address a wide spectrum of users and maximize market innovation success. This approach results in five main objectives: to 1. Develop a Collaborative Framework, with distributed platforms of functional services, 2. Implement a flexible and open “collaborative innovation” process involving users and SMEs, suppliers, operators and research organisations, 3. Develop, upgrade and integrate 78 new connectable and interoperable tools, 4. Conduct 5 large scale demonstrations on the field: o health disaster in Africa (Epidemics in Guinea, with strong social and cultural issues), o natural disaster in a politically complex region and a desert environment (Earthquake in the Jordan Valley, led jointly by Jordan, Israel and Palestine), o three global change disasters in Asia targeted at large evacuation and humanitarian support in Bangladesh (long lasting floods, huge storms and associated epidemics,), EU citizen support and repatriation in Shanghai (floods & storm surge), radiological and industrial disasters impacting EU assets in Taiwan (flash floods, landslides, storm surge and chemical and radiological disasters), supported and co-funded by local authorities, 5. Provide recommendations and evaluations for future legal and policy innovations. The project will be conducted under the supervision of senior end-users. It will be performed with flexible and proven procedures by a balanced consortium of users, industry, innovative SMEs, RTO and academia in the EU and the demonstration regions. The main expected impact is to improve external disaster and crisis management efficiency and cost-benefit and increase the EU visibility whilst enhancing EU industry competitiveness and enlarging the market.

The NEXES Research and Innovation Action aims to research, test and validate the promising integration of IP-based communication technologies and interoperability into the next generation emergency services, so that they attain increased effectiveness and performance. Empowered by smartphones with cameras, messaging and internet-based applications connecting to social media, citizens expect emergency services to use the same technologies. However, this is not the case. NEXES innovates the approach to the dynamics between emergency services and citizens, allowing (i) the use of total conversation capabilities in emergencies, including social media, to the benefit of citizens, including those with disability or special needs (ii) the exploitation of improved location information to rapidly and effectively identify and locate the caller and the incident site and (iii) the leverage of Internet-enabled connectivity to enhance interoperability and shared awareness among emergency services, to the benefit of a more secure society. The NEXES Consortium gathers world-class European entities, well experienced in the research and development of innovative solutions for communications and emergency products and solutions. The NEXES Team presents extensive background knowledge and in-house solutions to adapt, test and validate in NEXES’s open Testing Regime and Validation Framework, ensuring solid results are achieved to produce relevant Recommendations and contributions to Europe’s standardisation effort on emergency services. To leverage related dissemination and market exploitation activities, the NEXES System, Apps and its operational benefits are demonstrated in three realistic pilots to end-users and stakeholders. In fact, end-users’ involvement, directly ensured by NEXES Partners and indirectly by invited Advisors, is a key contributor to guarantee NEXES’s operational validity as a reference implementation system for next generation emergency services.