The European Commission has selected 38 projects for funding that for the next two to four years will advance security research in six different areas:
- Disaster-resilient societies: 8 projects will receive a total of €53.2 million
- The fight against crime and terrorism: 8 projects will receive a total of €52.8 million
- Digital security: 8 projects will receive a total of €48.4 million
- Border and external security: 7 projects will receive a total of total €39.5 million
- Protecting the infrastructure of Europe and the people in the European smart cities: 3 projects will receive a total of nearly €23 million
- General matters: 4 projects will receive a total of nearly €8 million
The €229.4 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
The INGENIOUS project will receive €8 million in EU funds to equip the first responders to emergencies and disasters with a toolkit for a quick and coordinated response. This toolkit will use the latest technological developments to better protect teams, improve their operational capacity, assist them in saving lives, and ensure their safe return from the disaster scene.
Ten law enforcement agencies from different European countries join forces in the PREVISION project to create a platform that can analyse multiple big data streams coming from various sources (social networks, open web, the Darknet, traffic and many more) and produce self-learning knowledge graphs. The platform will help to capture the structure, interrelations and trends of terrorist groups and individuals, cybercriminal organisations and organised crime groups. The project will receive €8 million in EU funds.
The PHOENIX project, with nearly €8 million in EU funds, aims to build a cyber-shield to protect Europe’s energy infrastructure. It would enable the detection and prevention of security incidents and attacks in order to guarantee the continuity of operations, and therefore minimise the impact on end-users.
The D4FLY project will create a better document verification system for border authorities to detect forged documents and combat identity fraud. The system is expected to improve the work of border controllers, as well as speed up border crossings for travellers. The project will receive nearly €7 million in EU funds.
The InfraStress project will receive nearly €8 million in EU funds to improve the resilience and protection capabilities of sensitive industrial sites in Europe that are exposed to large-scale threats and hazards. The project aims to integrate currently fragmented security solutions and technologies to create a system that can detect cyber and physical threats, analyse the situation, assess the resilience and provide solutions tailored to each site.
How were the projects selected?
All projects were selected for funding via three competitive calls for proposals launched on 15 March 2018:
- Protecting the infrastructure of Europe and the people in the European smart cities
- Security
- Digital security
230 project applications, accounting for a total of €1.4 billion of requested EU co-funding, were received by the call deadline on 28 August 2018. The total available budget for the calls was €206 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 will manage 36 of the selected projects and is finalising the preparation and signature of grant agreements with beneficiaries. Most projects will start before summer 2019 and will run for two to four years.
Background documents
List of security research projects selected for funding
Horizon 2020 – Secure societies – protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens
Details
- Publication date
- 14 May 2019
- Author
- European Research Executive Agency
- Location
- Brussels