The increasing complexity of security challenges combined with the accumulation of significant amounts of digital data calls for better and more widespread use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for law enforcement agencies (LEAs). AI can provide benefits to LEAs at all levels given the right understanding, tools, data and protection while increased awareness of criminal misuse is providing an immediate and concerning threat that must be tackled rapidly. Furthermore, a community that brings together LEAs, researchers, industry, security practitioners and other actors in the security ecosystem under a coordinated and strategic effort is essential for the realisation of these efforts into operational practices. STARLIGHT presents an inclusive and sustainable vision for increasing the awareness, capability, adoption and long-term impact of AI in Europe for LEAs. Five strategic goals underpin STARLIGHT’s approach: (1) Improve the widespread UNDERSTANDing of AI across LEAs to reinforce their investigative and cybersecurity operations and the need to uphold legal, ethical and societal values; (2) Provide opportunities to LEAs to EXPLOIT AI tools and solutions in their operational work that are trustworthy, transparent and human-centric; (3) Ensure that LEAs can PROTECT their own AI systems through privacy- and security-by-design approaches, better cybersecurity tools and knowledge; (4) Raise LEAs’ expertise and capacity to COMBAT the misuse of AI-supported crime and terrorism; and (5) BOOST AI for LEAs in Europe through high-quality datasets, an interoperable and standardised framework for long term sustainability of solutions, and the creation of an AI hub for LEAs that supports a strong AI security industry and enhances the EU’s strategic autonomy in AI. STARLIGHT will ensure European LEAs lead the way in AI innovation, autonomy and resilience, addressing the challenges of now and the future, prioritising the safety and security of Europe for all.

Criminals and terrorists use more and more data hiding methods (steganography) for concealing incriminating information in innocent-looking digital media files such as images, video, audio, and text files. UNCOVERs main objective is to fill existing gaps in the ability of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) for detecting the presence of such hidden information (i.e., steganalysis). To carry out a full investigation into criminal and terrorist activities, LEAs currently use available (commercial) tools to detect hidden information in collected digital media. However, these tools detect only a limited number of hiding methods, are slow, and offer no indication of confidence. Moreover, many commercial tools lag a decade behind the scientific state-of-the-art. The members of UNCOVER are committed to bridge these gaps and thus substantially increase the technological autonomy of LEAs in the field of digital media steganalysis. With its consortium of 22 partners including LEAs, forensic institutes, leading researchers working at universities and research institutions, as well as industrial companies, UNCOVER sets out to outperform available steganalysis solutions in terms of performance (number of detectable steganographic methods, detection accuracy), usability, operational needs, privacy protection, and chain-of-custody considerations. The developed detection and investigation tools will be integrated into a flexible and user-friendly platform. End-users play a key role throughout the project cycle: from proposal writing over analysis of user requirements and tools development through the final evaluation. In particular, regular feedback cycles with LEAs, forensics institutes and external stakeholders will ensure that the developed solutions can be integrated into the daily criminal investigation pipeline of LEAs. A set of clearly defined Key Performance Indicators allows an objective evaluation of progress and end results against the defined objectives.

Ensuring public spaces safety while preserving the freedom of citizens represents a challenge for European societies. Soft targets like malls, stadiums or big events continue to face a variety of evolving cyber and physical threats. To secure public spaces and other soft targets requires an integral security approach and new concepts involving all the security actors along with private operators. APPRAISE aims to build on the latest advances in big data analysis, artificial intelligence, and advanced visualisation to create an integral security framework that will improve both the cyber/physical security and safety of public spaces by enabling a proactive, integrated, risk-based, and resilience-oriented approach. This framework will be designed to support the secured private-public collaboration and optimise the coordination of operations involving private security staff, private operators, and law enforcement agencies. APPRAISE will offer unprecedented capabilities to predict and identify criminal and terrorist acts and enhance the operational collaboration of security actors before, during, and after an incident occurs. Social, Ethical, Legal, and Privacy observatories bringing together LEAs, private operators, technology experts, psychologists, sociologists, and society representatives will ensure full conformity of the developed tools with current EU legislation and citizens’ acceptance, preparing the ground for successful exploitation. The consortium consists of world-class research centres, industries, SMEs, LEAs of different types (national police, municipal police, elite tactical unit) as well as private security practitioners and operators, coordinated by a large industrial company with a leading position in the security market. APPRAISE will demonstrate its solutions in four complementary pilot sites: a tennis tournament in Italy, a transnational cycling tour with stages in France and Spain, an international fair in Poland, and a mall in Slovenia.

SYNERGISE will design, develop, integrate, deploy, test, validate and demonstrate a Novel Integrated Toolkit for Collaborative Response and Enhanced Situational Awareness (NIT-CRES), at the service of response agencies which ensures an upgrade to managing of complex incidents. This will comprise a multitude of tools and services required for: 1) boosting situational awareness and sense-making by offering them the means to autonomously and synergistically perform indoor and outdoor exploration of incident sites towards victim identification whilst receiving at all times information about responders’ position and vitals as well as analyses of passive and active threats and hazards at the area of operations and 2) upgrading collaborative response and incident as well resources management by continuously sharing and updating the common operational picture across deployed teams, among the chain of command and between participating agencies. The NIT-CRES armors the FRs at all fronts by delivering novel, affordable, accepted, and customized response tools and services as part of their operational assets. Notably, the toolkit abides to privacy, ethical, security and legal constraints by design, considers an increased degree of inclusiveness for its operators and its set-up facilitates collaborative response addressing standard operating procedures. The NIT-CRES will be provided at the service of the search and rescue personnel, fire brigades, emergency medical, police and civil protection agencies for extensive testing, training and validation (at component and Toolkit levels) in the framework of a rich Integration, Testing and Validation Activities Programme – of Round Tables (RTs), Collaborative Lab Tests (CLTs), Technical Integration Workshop (TIWS), Component Field Tests (CFTs) and System Field Tests (SFTs) – towards empowering collaborative response and handling of complex incidents to its fullest.

the IcARUS project seeks to facilitate a transformation in the application and utilisation of the knowledge base through the design of urban security policies. By rethinking tools for urban security policy, IcARUS project offers a unique opportunity to draw together the best evidence from urban security research and practice over the last 30 years to implement an integrated, evidence-based and multi-stakeholder approach to prominent urban security problems. Through a strategically designed process of co-production, IcARUS will integrate social and technological innovations to strengthen the strategic approach to urban security and therefore, promote a balanced vision of urban security, combining prevention, sanctions and social cohesion as mechanisms to encourage common approaches to security in the European Union. This project aims to transform the benefits to local communities in terms of urban security policies by engaging them as active co-producers of services rather than as passive recipients of public services alongside forms of multi-sectoral governance that deliver beneficial urban safety outcomes.