The Mediterranean and Black Sea region is characterised by a very volatile and dynamically changing security environment that pose severe threats and challenges on the societies and prosperity. The MEDEA project, during its 60 months of implementation provides funding for four interrelated actions: (i) Establish and Operate the MEDEA network, a multi-disciplinary network of security practitioners, with active links to policy makers and users/providers of security innovations across the M&BS countries focusing in Border Protection and other Security- and Disaster-Related tasks. During the project duration, MEDEA members will engage in activities towards maintaining its sustainability and longevity after the financing of this project ends, (ii) Engage participants in anticipatory governance on emerging security challenges that the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions would face in the coming years (present until +10 years), which concretely operationalizes the backbone of the project in a triple structure: a) understanding unsatisfactory state of play, b) design the desirable future and c) define a resilient pathway on how to achieve this, (iii) Push for the “co-creation” of security technology and capabilities innovations between practitioners and innovation suppliers, which is based upon their evaluation and prioritization on multi-criteria analysis (technology, operational and cost-benefit, etc.) and also linked to Human Development, Policy Making and Organizational Improvements in-terms of facilitating its use by the practitioners (iv) Establish and annually update the Mediterranean Security Research and Innovation Agenda (MSRIA), that identifies areas where security & defence research is needed and the establishment of recommendations for European Security & Defence technology investments.

ATLANTIS aims at enhancing resilience and Cyber-Physical-Human (CPH) security of the key EU Critical Infrastructures, going beyond the scope of distinct assets, systems, and single CI, by addressing resilience at the systemic level against major natural hazards and complex attacks that could potentially disrupt vital functions of the society. The mission of ATLANTIS, which involves 39 European partners with complementary roles and skills, is to improve the resilience and the protection capabilities of interconnected ECI exposed to evolving systemic risks due to existing and emerging large-scale, combined, cyber-physical threats and hazards, guarantee the continuity of operations, while minimizing cascading effects in the infrastructure itself, the environment, other CIs, and the involved population, enabling public and private actors to meet current and emerging challenges by adopting sustainable security solutions. The mission of ATLANTIS will be achieved by - Improving knowledge on large-scale, vulnerability assessment and long-term systemic risks. - Improving the systemic resilience of ECI, through novel, adaptive, flexible, and customizable security measures (“by design”) and tools (“by innovation”). - Improving effective cooperation among CI operators and government security stakeholders, while preserving CI autonomy and sovereignty. - Delivering an open TRL-7 technological framework that will provide the ECIs with AI -based solutions for increased AWARENESS, CAPABILITY and COOPERATION in managing systemic threats. The ATLANTIS solution will be validated and demonstrated in 3 large-scale cross-border and cross-sector pilots: - LSP#1: Cross-Border/Cross Domain Large Scale Pilot in Transport, Energy and Telecoms (Slovenia, Croatia, Italy and France); - LSP#2: Cross Domain Large Scale Pilot in Health, Logistics/Supply Chain and Border control (Cyprus, Greece and Croatia); - LSP#3: Cross-Country Large-Scale Pilot in FinTech/Financial (Spain, Germany, Cyprus).

Effective EU support to a large external crisis requires new approaches. In response to this challenge and to identified user and market needs from previous projects, Reaching Out proposes an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that will optimize the efforts, address a wide spectrum of users and maximize market innovation success. This approach results in five main objectives: to 1. Develop a Collaborative Framework, with distributed platforms of functional services, 2. Implement a flexible and open “collaborative innovation” process involving users and SMEs, suppliers, operators and research organisations, 3. Develop, upgrade and integrate 78 new connectable and interoperable tools, 4. Conduct 5 large scale demonstrations on the field: o health disaster in Africa (Epidemics in Guinea, with strong social and cultural issues), o natural disaster in a politically complex region and a desert environment (Earthquake in the Jordan Valley, led jointly by Jordan, Israel and Palestine), o three global change disasters in Asia targeted at large evacuation and humanitarian support in Bangladesh (long lasting floods, huge storms and associated epidemics,), EU citizen support and repatriation in Shanghai (floods & storm surge), radiological and industrial disasters impacting EU assets in Taiwan (flash floods, landslides, storm surge and chemical and radiological disasters), supported and co-funded by local authorities, 5. Provide recommendations and evaluations for future legal and policy innovations. The project will be conducted under the supervision of senior end-users. It will be performed with flexible and proven procedures by a balanced consortium of users, industry, innovative SMEs, RTO and academia in the EU and the demonstration regions. The main expected impact is to improve external disaster and crisis management efficiency and cost-benefit and increase the EU visibility whilst enhancing EU industry competitiveness and enlarging the market.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already part of our lives and is extensively entering the space sector to offer value-added Earth Observation (EO) products and services. Copernicus data and other georeferenced data sources are often highly heterogeneous, distributed and semantically fragmented. Large volumes of satellite data (images and associated metadata) are frequently coming to the Earth from Sentinel constellation, offering a basis for creating value-added products that go beyond the space sector. The analysis and data fusion of all streams of data need to take advantage of the existing DIAS and HPC infrastructures, as well as the Galileo-enabled mobile devices when required by the involved end users to deliver fully automated processes in decision support systems. CALLISTO project integrates Copernicus data, already indexed in DIAS platforms such as ONDA-DIAS, utilising High Performance Computing infrastructures for enhanced scalability when needed. Complementary distributed data sources involve Galileo positioning data, visual content from UAVs, Web and social media data linking them with open geospatial data, in-situ sensor data. On top of these data sources, AI methods are applied to extract meaningful knowledge such as concepts, changes, activities, events, 3D-models, videos and animations of the user community. AI methods are also executed at the edge, offering enhanced scalability and timely services. The analysis of the extracted knowledge is performed in a semantic way and the associated analytics are delivered to the end users in non-traditional interfaces, including Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixer Reality in general. Data fusion among several types of data sources is provided on-demand, based on the end user requirements. The AI methods are trained to offer new virtual and augmented reality applications to water utility operators, journalists for the media sector, EU agriculture and CAP policymakers, and security agencies.

The AI-ARC proposal presents a highly innovative and user-friendly artificial intelligence (AI) based platform known as the Virtual Control Room (VCR). Due to the vast amounts of information collected the potential for information overload is real. This reality can complicate the operational picture; reduce situational awareness and often results in delayed and impaired decision-making. On the other hand, areas such as the Arctic Sea suffer from a lack of communication, surveillance data and rescue assets and without action taken to address these vulnerabilities, the consequences are potentially dramatic in terms of accidents, pollution, border infringements and criminal activities. The AI-ARC VCR supports all these challenges by applying AI, machine-learning and virtual reality (VR) technologies to filter numerous validated and statistical data streams and databases to a user-friendly interface. The VCR improves situational awareness by assisting end users to customize a “smart” operational picture. The VCR will permit users to specify their preferences in terms of threat levels, abnormal behavior, interoperability and risk management by flagging detected anomalies with confidence and providing threat or risk levels according to a predefined model based on user preferences. This means that users can create awareness for their own purposes that reflects their needs without increasing their workload. AI-ARC‘s principal objectives align fully with the H2020 BES-SU-open, and are of crucial relevance to it. The Virtual Control Room (VCR) has the power to greatly improve maritime situational awareness, decision-making, communication, available rescue resources, and thus the safety of all maritime actors, particularly in the Arctic Sea. Furthermore, the enhanced communication and collaboration provided by AI ARC’s innovative technology encourages, and enables further development of symbiotic services and fosters much needed Arctic cooperation.