I527-290 ESRIF Final Report (WEB).indd - European Commission

• Law enforcement and intelligence agencies should improve their capabilities with respect to Public Private Trusted
Information Exchange.
• New forensic sciences should be applied to non-traditional options for fi ghting against crime.
• Counteracting explosives should develop an information infrastructure that is accessible to all who need this confi dential
information, with as a special option to support the brigades on route.
• Security personnel should be better trained and educated by setting up an infrastructure for making use of lessons learnt
in other parts of Europe.
exchange of new, successful approaches and development of new improved approaches for the threats and incidents to be
dealt with.
1.3.2 Research priorities (for the ESRIA)
ESRIF working group 1 selected the following research needs as priorities for the ESRIA:
Methods to improve the social coherence of the society. Trust between citizens and societal structures is a key factor
for prevention of feelings of uneasiness and of seeds for rumbling processes. Mutual respect of population groups with
signifi cant diff erences in welfare or in ethnic and religious backgrounds needs attention. A resilient society requires, in
case of security incidents, the alert acting of well prepared citizens, as well as effi cient, fl exible and proportional acting
organisations for intelligence, sharing of situation awareness and coordination of preventive and responsive actions.
Analysis of mechanisms with respect to lack of solidarity between citizens from various parts of society and making social
and societal barriers more porous. This analysis should result in a methodology for the development of methods for an early
detection of tensions between population groups and subsequent practical measure to diminish risks.
Analysis of the relevant socio-economic factors for the development of organised crime and the creation of barriers for
further related progress.
Advanced and virtual methods for education and instruction of citizens, public bodies, fi rst responders and other security
services in order to reach a more eff ective response to security and safety threats. These methods should challenge the
participants’ imagination by using modelling, simulation and serious gaming.
Technologies for improving the eff ectiveness and/or the effi ciency of physical measures for the protection of persons,
infrastructure and living areas.
Systems for the surveillance of public areas and specifi c locations by automatic analysis of observations combined with
databases containing intelligence information.
Fast and reliable detection and control systems concerning explosives at vulnerable locations, buildings and events
Methods and information infrastructure for supporting interventions and communication to communities, and individuals,
in case of (large scale) incidents. This includes systems processing sensor data, real-time observations and information in
a well structured way. Other topics are environmental alert systems, detection sensors for UAV’s, balloons and satellites.
Special attention is needed for alerting the right people with the proper information and instructions without overloading
human beings with information.
Information systems with multiple interfaces, suited for consulting by diff erent categories of users in the event of suspicious
activity. A special feature should allow their use by mobile surveillance and intervention brigades.
Development of better aligned doctrines, equipment and procedures for interventions in several categories of characteristic
incidents. Education and training of decision makers, public services and citizens, through exercises in realistic environments
around validated scenarios, should be facilitated by new techniques for modelling, simulation and gaming. The virtual
extensions of the real environment off er a promising challenge.
Artifi cial analysis methods and agent technologies to support investigations in relevant sectors of society. A special issue is
the development of methods for retrieval and analysis of data and information available in unstructured, multilingual texts
in an enormous variety of proprietary and open sources.
Tracing of illegal activities and analysis of patterns of behaviour of organised crime groups in cyberspace, with special
attention to fi nancial and payment systems.
Internationalisation of information and communication infrastructure for dealing with security issues. The legislative
framework, the technical architecture and the standardisation of tools, databases and protocols should make it possible
to set up specifi c ICT-systems which can be used under diff erent levels of security restrictions. These systems should be
67