Periodic Reporting for period 2 - APPRAISE (fAcilitating Public & Private secuRity operAtors to mitigate terrorIsm Scenarios against soft targEts)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-03-01 bis 2024-02-29
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.
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.