Periodic Reporting for period 2 - APPRAISE (fAcilitating Public & Private secuRity operAtors to mitigate terrorIsm Scenarios against soft targEts)
Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2024-02-29
Cyber and physical threats are becoming increasingly complex. As a result, public safety measures need to stay one step ahead of the fast-paced changes. The EU-funded APPRAISE project developed an integrated threat intelligence solution designed for protecting the augmented cities environment. It performed a continuous and Cyber and physical attacks on public spaces are becoming increasingly complex and can lead to dramatic consequences. To counter these attacks, public safety measures need to stay one step ahead of the fast-paced changes, requiring an integral security approach involving all the security actors comprising private operators. The H2020 APPRAISE project developed an integrated threat intelligence solution designed for the protection soft targets. By leveraging continuous and effective monitoring of online sources and physical spaces using smart sensing, APPRAISE enables to identify potential threats and enables to improve strategies for the protection of public spaces (such as shopping malls, parks, expo centres, etc.), while preserving the freedom of European citizens. Building on the latest advances in big data analysis, AI and advanced visualisation, APPRAISE offers unprecedented capabilities to predict and identify criminal and terrorist acts and enhance the private-public collaboration of security actors.
APPRAISE delivered a scalable framework aiming at improving the cyber/physical security and safety of public spaces by enabling a proactive, integrated, risk-based, and resilience-oriented approach. This framework was designed to support the secured private-public collaboration and optimise the coordination of operations involving private security staff and operators, as well as law enforcement agencies, 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 were involved to ensure full conformity of the developed tools with current EU legislation and citizens’ acceptance, preparing the ground for successful exploitation.
The consortium involved 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 demonstrated its solutions in four complementary pilot sites: a major music festival in Italy, a transnational cycling tour with stages in France and Spain, an international fair in Poland, and a mall in Slovenia.
APPRAISE delivered a scalable framework aiming at improving the cyber/physical security and safety of public spaces by enabling a proactive, integrated, risk-based, and resilience-oriented approach. This framework was designed to support the secured private-public collaboration and optimise the coordination of operations involving private security staff and operators, as well as law enforcement agencies, 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 were involved to ensure full conformity of the developed tools with current EU legislation and citizens’ acceptance, preparing the ground for successful exploitation.
The consortium involved 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 demonstrated its solutions in four complementary pilot sites: a major music festival in Italy, a transnational cycling tour with stages in France and Spain, an international fair in Poland, and a mall in Slovenia.
During the project timeframe, technical and end-user partners have tightly collaborated to define the list of end user needs delineating the boundaries of the APPRAISE system. This work has enabled the end users to precisely describe their requirements as well as realistic evaluation scenarios for each of the pilots, based on the daily challenges faced by the security agents. These scenario-driven approach guided the technical partners to design the innovative APPRAISE framework. Stemming from these specifications, with the pilot scenarios as a target, the development teams have iteratively researched, developed, and integrated the APPRAISE system which was firstly fully evaluated during a large-scale pilot in Slovenia coupled with the national exercise for the Slovenian Ministry of Interior involving close to one hundred trainees and trainers outside of the consortium, including public and private organizations. The evaluation was pursued from May-Nov 2023 in a total of 4 pilots in various set-ups with their specific challenges, such as cross-border collaboration, tests in conjunction with a major railway event or a simulated attack at the KappaFutur Festival in Torino. The major project result is the APPRAISE framework, a set of innovative technologies ranging from social network analysis, security camera algorithmic surveillance with drones, counter UAV systems, as well as a novel digital twin-based cross-organisational hypervision system enabling to fuse data from various online and physical sensors to make it intelligible to support decision making for operation commanders. The APPRAISE framework main advantages are its flexibility, scalability and interoperability with legacy systems. Mature exploitable tools have been tested and are being prepared for commercialisation in the field of soft target protection, but also critical infrastructure or smart city protection. All these technologies, deployed to physically and cyber protect public spaces, have been documented in 93 deliverables.
APPRAISE delivered beyond the SoTA tools for security practitioners to improve their operational capabilities performing (i) online content analysis, (ii) soft target risk assessment, (iii) actionable threat intelligence extraction, and (iii) smart and effective data visualization in a digital-twin based hypervision system with (iv) AI-based decision support capabilities. The online content analysis module acquires data (textual, visual and audio) from both surface web and darknet sources and performs a multi-modal analysis to extract indicators of imminent attacks in specific soft targets. A social network analysis enables to identify networks and specific individuals orchestrating either the attack or propaganda campaigns. The output of the threat detection modules and the online content analysis module, together with smart city data, are visualized on a digital twin-based hypervision and operation management system that enable intuitive real-time situational awareness. Furthermore, the available data was analysed using AI-based Big-Data tools for geospatial analysis, threat intelligence and predictive analytics, enabling advanced Decision Support Services.
The definition of the evaluation scenarios has involved public and private organization even some being cross-border. The feedback revealed the necessity of such tools, even though complex in their technologies, but also in its deployment and adoption. The APPRAISE technologies have been designed in a scenario-driven and user-centric approach to contribute to the impacts of the topic SU-FCT-03 Information and data stream management to fight against (cyber)crime and terrorism and to the broader objectives of the Work Programme, i.e. protection of citizens, society and economy as well as of prosperity, stability and well-being.
In terms of socio-economic impact and societal implications, APPRAISE has studied the societal acceptance in several EU countries and the UK. The results clearly show the importance of cultural differences when it comes to the acceptance of novel surveillance technologies. It outlines the aversion of society members when it comes to the use of data, even if it is used to ensure their security. Finally, an important outcome is the fact that stakeholders who were able to see the system in action during the pilots are more prone to accept and adopt the technologies offered within APPRAISE. One conclusion could be that an educational approach enabling citizens to familiarise themselves with the technologies and give them all the information they need to compare the benefits of security improvement versus sharing personal data.
The definition of the evaluation scenarios has involved public and private organization even some being cross-border. The feedback revealed the necessity of such tools, even though complex in their technologies, but also in its deployment and adoption. The APPRAISE technologies have been designed in a scenario-driven and user-centric approach to contribute to the impacts of the topic SU-FCT-03 Information and data stream management to fight against (cyber)crime and terrorism and to the broader objectives of the Work Programme, i.e. protection of citizens, society and economy as well as of prosperity, stability and well-being.
In terms of socio-economic impact and societal implications, APPRAISE has studied the societal acceptance in several EU countries and the UK. The results clearly show the importance of cultural differences when it comes to the acceptance of novel surveillance technologies. It outlines the aversion of society members when it comes to the use of data, even if it is used to ensure their security. Finally, an important outcome is the fact that stakeholders who were able to see the system in action during the pilots are more prone to accept and adopt the technologies offered within APPRAISE. One conclusion could be that an educational approach enabling citizens to familiarise themselves with the technologies and give them all the information they need to compare the benefits of security improvement versus sharing personal data.