EXERTER connects 22 practitioners from 13 EU Member States into a Network with Explosives Specialists within the Security of Explosives (SoE) area. The objective of the EXERTER Network is to bridge the difficulties for security practitioners to capture and utilize research results and to direct the industry’s innovation efforts to address the most pressing needs in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. Practitioners will via EXERTER get improved operational capability via novel technologies, methods and knowledge to aid them in executing more efficient countermeasures in a changing threat environment. In cooperation with key practitioners in the Network, the project will each year define one unique scenario based on past events to facilitate the identification of capability gaps along different counter-terrorist phases associated with PREVENT, DETECT, MITIGATE and REACT. With its explosives expertise, EXERTER will provide recommendations to the SoE community on how these gaps can be countered by (i) directing innovators into targeted areas to which research programmes should focus, (ii) proposing standardization priority areas and (iii) advising on exploitation and commercialisation opportunities. Ongoing research activities will continuously be reviewed to promote practitioners’ uptake of results and knowledge. Academia and research institutes will be supported by the technical expertise within EXERTER to lower exploitation barriers for promising research by enhancing their interaction with security industry. EXERTER will assess evolving threats requiring immediate attention of the SoE community - thus widely addressing emerging technologies and trends. Annual interaction workshops will be held where explosives practitioners, research institutes and academia as well as industry gather to discuss the current state of play and future roadmaps to answer to urgent capability requirements.

HoloZcan brings a new tool for security actors (police, relief workers, disaster managers, crisis managers, stakeholders responsible for public safety, critical infrastructure, and service providers) notably in the fields of autonomous detection and response capabilities. The project will increase (environmental and exhaled) bio-aerosol sensing/measurement capability of CBRN practitioners by developing a high resolution, large throughput, automatic and highly portable detection system for making automatic classification of pathogens and particles. HoloZcan develops of a novel holographic microscopy and imaging technology for rapid and cost-efficient screening of potential biological threats and unknown, potentially dangerous substances, combined with methods of artificial intelligence and machine learning. It establishes a framework of a dynamic feature selection and validation algorithm to support the continuous innovation capability of the system in the field of adaptive learning and database optimization for specific bioinformatic applications. The project also develops comprehensive and innovative means of respiratory, ventilation and environmental biological data sampling that can be used in real-time, standoff or in mobile bio-detection context. The project indicates the HoloZcan technique versatility for a wide range of applications and demonstrates its technical feasibility. The project responses to the actual needs of European practitioners and technological gaps identified by the ENCIRCLE project as indicated in the ENCIRCLE Catalogue of Technologies and addresses several shortcomings of the current approaches to bio-threat agent detection. The HoloZcan project applies a flexible adaptive approach to design and CBRN practitioners are engaged as project partners or as external stakeholders in the process.