Storytelling applies to nearly everything we do. Everybody uses stories, from educators to marketers and from politicians to journalists to inform, persuade, entertain, motivate or inspire. In the cultural heritage sector, however, narrative tends to be used narrowly, as a method to communicate to the public the findings and research conducted by the domain experts of a cultural site or collection. The principal objective of the EMOTIVE project is to research, design, develop and evaluate methods and tools that can support the cultural and creative industries in creating Virtual Museums which draw on the power of 'emotive storytelling'. This means storytelling that can engage visitors, trigger their emotions, connect them to other people around the world, and enhance their understanding, imagination and, ultimately, their experience of cultural sites and content. EMOTIVE will do this by providing the means to authors of cultural products to create high-quality, interactive, personalized digital stories. The EMOTIVE project targets two main groups of users: 1. Authors: members of the cultural and creative industries in charge of creating interactive cultural experiences (i.e., interactive stories) and making them available to the visitors. 2. Visitors: people experiencing the cultural site through a “World” created with the EMOTIVE Authoring System. They join in the available experiences when entering the site or when remotely connecting to the site’s Virtual Museum. The project results will be evaluated and validated in major cultural sites in Europe through an extensive network of cultural organizations and creative industries that have expressed their interest to the project.

To effectively respond to the multitude & complexity of cybersecurity challenges in smart-homes GHOST deploys a pioneering software-enabled ‘usable security’ solution. The project brings professional level security to the European citizens and to this end it: (a) increases the automation level & effectiveness of existing security services; (b) opens up the cybersecurity ‘blackbox’ to consumers, creates understanding and builds trust through effortless decision support & advanced ‘usable transparency’; (c) enhances the system’s self-defence by safeguarding critical security-related data using blockchain technology. GHOST software will be embedded in an adequately adapted smart-home network gateway though it will be designed to be vendor-independent. A dedicated middleware layer ensures interoperability with multiple gateways & IoT devices. GHOST considers the relationship between security and usability to be an integration challenge (positive sum game) and definitely not a trade-off (zero-sum game). In this context, the project envisions to lead a paradigm shift in consumer cybersecurity by successfully coupling usable security with transparency and behavioural engineering. The envisaged user experience will systematically trigger security-friendly behaviour aiming at establishing appropriate ‘habitual behaviours’. The solution will perform network analysis & deep packet inspection for suspicious pattern recognition, will apply machine learning for malicious behaviour detection, will carry out context-aware real-time risk assessment, and widely apply analytics & visualization for effortless user comprehension & decision support. In short, GHOST will (i) increase cybersecurity resilience; (ii) boost usability & automation; and (iii) enhance the competitiveness of European ICT security industry. GHOST will be demonstrated in more than 140 real smart-homes in Spain, Norway & Romania via the Red Cross network and beta testers from the customer basis of Televes & ThingsMaze.

EU trade, transport, tourism and economic development are directly dependent on open and safe seas and oceans. EU's maritime borders are widely spread including various topologies from open sea to semi-enclosed cabins with islands and islets. This poses great challenges that affect securing maritime border areas. Failing to protect against a wide array of maritime threats and risks may result in these areas becoming arenas for international conflicts, terrorism or organized crime, where smuggling, irregular immigration and drug trafficking are the most common ones. RANGER aims at re-enforcing EU by combining innovative Radar technologies with novel technological solutions for early warning, in view of delivering a surveillance platform offering detection, recognition, identification and tracking of suspicious vessels, capabilities exceeding current radar systems. It will be a platform, consisting of 2 radar technologies, a novel Over-The-Horizon Radar combined with a Multiple Input Multiple Output one implemented exploiting the latest photonics advancements, and an Early Warning System exploiting deep and adaptable machine learning schemes able to Automatically detect radar Targets. It safeguards seamless fitting and interoperability with CISE (enhanced maritime surveillance and cross border SaR operations), through the development of a CISE translation Gateway, exporting on-demand CISE services directly to end-users, by strengthening the information exchange between national authorities and the European Agency. RANGER leverages the experience of its consortium, a balanced blend of technology providers, domain experts and end-users, delivering a cost efficient, environmental friendly solution, abiding to regulations and legislation for the protection of human lives. Two pilot exercises are foreseen to thoroughly assess RANGER’s ability to deliver on its promises, enhancing its potential to become a flagship platform for the European Maritime Surveillance industry.

The project aims to unlock the full potential of CISE, by validating in a long period of time CISE-compatible command, control and coordination systems from several Coast and Border Agencies. At the same time it is envisaged to further enhance, validate and demonstrate CISE by extending its scope for land borders and adapting relevant C2 solutions and associated services. This will be accomplished by extending the CISE data model based on the use cases and requirements and adapting state-of-the-art command & control systems for full compliancy with the enhanced model and CISE message exchange patterns. The project architecture will follow a hybrid scheme in order to allow the usage of the End User CISE Nodes/Gateways and at the same time to allow the testing and validation of the extended data model. The project will leverage on the developments, results and experience of the consortium from current and previous research projects (PERSEUS, CloseEye, MARISA, RANGER), from National Procurement projects of CISE Nodes and Adaptors and on the CISE infrastructure of the End Users.