SAFEguardinG pUblic spAces through intelligent thReat Detection tools

SAFEGUARD aims to improve the Law Enforcement Agency’s (LEA) capabilities in preventing terrorist attacks.

Grant Agreement Number: ISF/2022/SA/3.4.1 / 6006936

Funded by: Internal Security Fund (ISF) Duration: 01/01/2024 – 30/6/2027

Challenge

The recent terrorist attacks that have targeted open and easily accessible public areas in several European cities, including malls, crowded gathering areas, places of worship, and transportation infrastructures pose a challenge for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to provide effective countermeasure solutions for the protection of public spaces. Increasing pressure is put on governments and European authorities, given the rise of extremist activities perpetrated by organisations, groups, or radicalised individuals (known as lone wolfs) with an underlying political or ideological orientation, which severely impact citizens, disrupt the socioeconomic stability of modern societies, and undermine public confidence in national authorities. The recent terrorist attacks in Europe have also uncovered the extensive abuse of Surface, Deep, and Dark Web and social media services, used as cross-cutting enablers of terrorist activities, in terms of orchestrating operations and recruiting new members and perpetrators of future assaults. In this context, LEAS need to monitor suspicious behaviour in public spaces before and during large events of interest, leveraging advanced and targeted technologies aiming to correlate potential criminal and/or terrorist activities in near real-time, to prevent and mitigate a possible threat.

Innovation

SAFEGUARD aims at integrating, validating, and demonstrating a next-generation holistic suite of tools that significantly improve LEA capabilities to protect public spaces through the entire lifecycle of their operations, by investigating, detecting, assessing, and preventing terrorist and extremist activities targeting public areas.

Action

The main activities of the project include:

• Deployment of tools, systems, and technologies to improve the protection of public spaces in near real-time and for acquiring valuable information regarding terrorist attacks in public spaces.
• Development of knowledge on the potential use of AI techniques and algorithms for acquiring valuable information regarding the protection of public spaces
• Conduction of field exercises to evaluate the integration and performance of the developed SAFEGUARD platform
• Provision of hands-on training activities to LEAs to be acquainted with the SAFEGUARD platform

The project is co-funded by the Program Greece of the Internal Security Fund 2021-2027 of the European Union.

Project Partners