EU to invest nearly €253 million in security research

The European Commission has selected 42 projects for funding that for the next two to four years will advance security research in six different areas:

The €253 million funding comes from Horizon 2020, the EU’s €80 billion research and innovation programme. The EU's financial contribution is made in the form of grants that can be up to 100% of the project’s total budget.

Examples of projects that have been selected:

STAMINA develops an intelligent decision support toolset for pandemic prediction and management and demonstrates its use by practitioners at national and regional levels within and across EU borders. The STAMINA toolset enables national planners and first responders to anticipate and respond to the “known-unknowns” in their daily effort to enhance health security.

The SIXTHSENSE project is a wearable health monitoring system with closed loop tactile bio-feedback, that allows first responders in hazardous situations to sense their current health status. It allows early detection of risk factors that could lead to rapid deterioration of health or operation capabilities of first responders, by leveraging predictive models based on multimodal biosensor data. As a team management tool it enables real-time monitoring of all deployed operatives, helping increase team effectiveness and operational safety.

The SAFETY4RAILS project develops methods and systems to increase the safety and recovery of track-based inter-city railway and intra-city metro transportation. The SAFETY4RAILS tools address both cyber-only attacks (such as impact from WannaCry infections), physical-only attacks (such as the Madrid commuter trains bombing in 2004) and combined cyber-physical attacks, which given increasing IoT infrastructure integration will increase resilience of railway networks. SAFETY4RAILS concentrates on rush hour rail transport scenarios where many passengers are using metros and railways to commute to work or attend mass events (e.g. large multi-venue sporting events such as the Olympics).

INFINITY’s ambition is to become a flagship project against society’s most pressing cybercriminal, terrorist and hybrid threats. Synthesising the latest innovations in virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning with big data and visual analytics, Infinity delivers an integrated solution that aims to revolutionise data-driven investigations. Specifically, it will equip investigators and analysts with cutting-edge tools to acquire, process, visualise and act upon the enormous quantities of data they are faced with every day.

EU-HYBNET is a Pan-European network of security practitioners, stakeholders, academics, industry players, and SME actors across the EU collaborating with each other to counter hybrid threats. A technology and innovations watch, facilitated by scientific research, will ensure smooth execution of searching, monitoring, identifying and assessing innovations both under development or already proven, including the level of technology readiness for uptake or industrialisation.

HEIR focuses specifically on Electronic Medical Devices. Currently, the healthcare sector suffers from numerous and multi-layered vulnerabilities: default, weak or no passwords used in authentication for remote connections, unsupported operating systems, outdated, unmanaged and vulnerable software are among the most serious problems that threaten both the smooth operation and the data aggregated and stored. The vision of HEIR project is to provide a thorough threat identification and cybersecurity knowledge base system comprising both local (in the hospital / medical centre) and global (including different stakeholders) levels.

The mission of the ENTRANCE project is to develop and validate a comprehensive user-based ENTRANCE Toolbox for risk-based non-intrusive inspection of cross-border freight movements, with particular focus on the EU Customs Union border. The aim of the ENTRANCE Toolbox is to enhance border security practitioners’ capabilities to protect society against a wide range of dangerous and illicit materials with minimum disruption of cross-border flow of goods.

How were the projects selected?

All projects were selected for funding via three competitive calls for proposals launched on 14 Mar 2019:

• Protecting the infrastructure of Europe and the people in the European smart cities
• Security
• Digital security

342 project applications were received by the call deadline on 22 August 2019. The total available budget for the calls was €233 million. The European Commission decided to increase this amount due to the high priority of security research at the EU level.

The selected projects received the highest marks in a peer evaluation process run by the European Commission’s Research Executive Agency (REA) with the help of external experts.

Next steps

The REA has finalised the preparation and signature of grant agreements with beneficiaries. Most projects are starting between May and October 2020 and will run for two to four years. The REA will manage all the selected projects, in collaboration with DG HOME and DG CNECT regarding the policy-related aspects.

Background documents

Horizon 2020 – Secure societies – protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens

European Agenda on Security