The European submarine networks are vital critical infrastructure for the EU member states. This submarine cable and pipeline network is crucial for the European society and any failure or damage to it could potentially have an enormous effect on the societies. Due to the rapidly evolving threat and geopolitical landscape, especially with incidents like the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas infrastructure, organizations overseeing critical infrastructure face significant challenges. They must handle intentional threats while also grappling with growing problems caused by accidental and natural factors as well as climate change. These issues can worsen the effects of deliberate actions. To address these challenges effectively, it is crucial for these entities to implement resilience-enhancing measures. The aim of VIGIMARE is to strengthen the resilience of Critical Infrastructure operators against threats to the European submarine critical infrastructure by developing, testing and evaluating an innovative solution to enhance security and reduce risks of physical and cyber-attacks on submarine cables and pipelines. This will be accomplished by 1) mapping submarine systems, surveying cables and landing stations, and assessing vulnerabilities in the European submarine critical infrastructure network, 2) develop an automated threat detection approach, creating a real-time shared awareness of the surface above the submarine infrastructure to promptly indicate incidents to both critical infrastructure owners and member states authorities. By integrating a comprehensive resilience ecosystem with real incidents at sea, the project seeks to 3) identify early warning signals, support analysis, and pinpoint potential response activities to address physical, cyber and hybrid threats. The result will be enhanced resilience for submarine critical infrastructure owners, supporting authorities to enforce the CER and NIS2 directives implementation in the EU member states.

The objectives of LEONARDO are: 1) to develop a new microvehicle based on the smart fusion of the concepts of monowheel and scooter. The monowheel and the scooter have the best characteristics to be used as a means of daily transport and to fully exploit the intermodality. The new microvehicle will take the best features of these two vehicles and eliminate the disadvantages, obtaining a silent, clean, energy efficient and safe vehicle, as well as attractive and affordable to the public so that the barriers for adopting it are minimized. The development includes a) the consolidation of already outlined conpects, through analysis of functionality and comparison with existing vehicles, on the basis of an extensive analysis of user's needs and safety and regulamentary aspects b) structural and electrical / electronic design c) in-house testing 2) to do an extensive demonstration and re-design activity. The vehicle will be tested in a real environment in 5 European cities: Rome, Palermo, Eilat and 2 others that will be identified with a tender. In these demonstration tests, a fleet of vehicle will be tested for free by hundreds of users, on a rotating basis. Each vehicle can be used in stand alone mode or in battery sharing mode, through a system already developed by UNIFI, made available for the project. Operating data will be automatically collected through a platform and users will be asked to give feedback weekly. The pilot in Rome and Palermo will start with 50 vehicles and will be used for a revision and re-design process, to arrive up to a TRL 7. Afterwards, the other pilots will start, in sequence, for 3 months in each city, in which 100 vehicles will be tested. These tests will be used to refine the vehicle up to the TRL8-9 and to do a physical demonstration of the technical and economic feasibility. During the pilots, pre-orders will be accepted. A detailed exploitation strategy and a draft business plan for the vehicle will be draft with the data collected.

CREST aims to equip LEAs with an advanced prediction, prevention, operation, and investigation platform by leveraging the IoT ecosystem, autonomous systems, and targeted technologies and building upon the concept of multidimensional integration and correlation of heterogeneous multimodal data streams (ranging from online content to IoT-enabled sensors) for a) threat detection and assessment, b) dynamic mission planning and adaptive navigation for improved surveillance based on autonomous systems, c) distributed command and control of law enforcement missions, d) sharing of information and exchange of digital evidence based on blockchain, and e) delivery of pertinent information to different stakeholders in an interactive manner tailored to their needs. CREST will also provide chain-of-custody, and path-to-court for digital evidence. Human factors and societal aspects will also be comprehensively addressed, while information packages for educating the wider public on identifying threats and protecting themselves will be prepared and distributed.The platform development will adopt ethics and privacy by-design principles and will be customisable to the legislation of each member state. CREST will be validated in field tests and demonstrations in three operational uses cases: 1) protection of public figures in motorcades and public spaces, 2) counter terrorism security in crowded areas, and 3) Cross-border fight against organised crime (e.g. firearms trafficking). Extensive training of LEAs' personnel, hands-on experience, joint exercises, and training material, will boost the uptake of CREST tools and technologies. With a Consortium of 8 LEAs from 8 European countries, 7 research/academic institutions, 1 civil organisation, and 7 industry partners, CREST delivers a strong representation of the challenges, the requirements and the tools to meet its objectives.

Lasers4EU is incorporating the major laser research infrastructures, in a large number of European member states, into a comprehensive virtual distributed laser research infrastructure that is offering to a broad user community, from academia and industry, access to an exceptional portfolio of technical and scientific capabilities. This unique set of instruments together with the specific scientific expertise at the host facilities allows Lasers4EU users to carry out high-level research in an extremely wide range of high-impact topics in life sciences, materials nano-processing, etc. Laser technology has experienced remarkable advances and breakthroughs and is now a key innovation driver for highly diversified societal applications and products, thereby substantially contributing to economic growth and to solving challenges in the areas of health, environment and energy. Through its strategic approach, Lasers4EU aims to strengthen Europe’s leading position and competitiveness. It facilitates long-term coordination of the laser research activities within the European Research Area and provides concerted and efficient services to scientific, industrial and medical researchers. The main objectives of Lasers4EU are to: • provide coordinated access to high-quality services based on a coherent and comprehensive consortium of 27 leading European laser installations offering to users from academia as well as from industry cutting-edge performances at the forefront of the laser technologies, • structure the European landscape of laser Research Infrastructure through enhanced access, extended geographical coverage, novel science diplomacy activities, improved synergies with other European networks and projects, • increase European human resources in the field of laser science by implementing training activities towards researchers from new domains of science and technology and from geographical regions where laser communities are still less developed.