The list of challenges of the Open Call #1 is set for the 3 SecurIT Domains!
It was defined from the discussions hold on 18 &19 November 2021 workshops with potential end-users of SecurIT funded solutions.
Understanding End-users needs & challenges…
From the launch of the project the Consortium have defined 3 key Domains of innovation for more secured, safe and resilient Smart Cities & Territories.
On 18 & 19 November 2021 – through 3 workshop-webinars hosted by Safe Cluster hosted – SecurIT invited potential European large groups (companies) and end-users of the future SecurIT funded solutions to discuss about the 3 Domains and share us their main pain points and needs for innovations.
The online discussions permitted to collect from the participants their contribution of use-cases, re-orient and prioritise the challenges, and identify some key elements that could have been left apart. The end-users and integrators expressed their needs while underlining the main issues they were facing.
The objective was to identify common gaps among their community, which later shall be the basis of the Open Call description. The work carried out through this process of consultations permitted to gather +35 end-users and integrators such as: cities representatives, corporations (energy-providers), Law Enforcement Agencies, National digital agencies, civil security entities.
These major players of smart cities and territories conveyed their challenges to be tackled and expressed their expectations for solutions to be provided from European SMEs. The workshop discussions allowed SecurIT partners to propose in the 1st upcoming Open Call strategic challenges in a cross-border and cross-sectorial industry value chain, that will ensure a real interest for SMEs, in terms of potential expected market as well as the business and collaboration that will be developed, while matching current and future needs of practitioners.
…On 3 targeted Domains
Domain #1: Sensitive infrastructure protection
Domain #1 workshop permitted to the end-users to agree on their major concerns around the security of sensitive sites, in a current context of social unrest, pandemics, terrorist threats. For instance, a large group of energy-supplier expressed the need to have a holistic approach because of the cascading effects of incidents in a critical facility. The end-users also introduced important notions to consider in the development of new innovative technologies: their maintainability, the aspect of supply chain and acceptable price, and the need for strong interoperability.
Domain #2: Disaster resilience
During the 2-hour workshop on Domain #2 was notably stressed the need for integrating 3 related items linked to disaster resilience: anticipation, crisis management, and the “build-back-better” approach, that implies a necessary feedback on crisis. They also stressed the importance of social and citizen participation in a moment of crisis, the need of developing some digital tools with citizens, and the citizen awareness needed in decision-making. They also separated information and communication, that addresses different publics: while communication is used for internal audience (first responders, etc.), information must be considered as external information to public, citizens and victims of a disaster.
They also stressed out the following current and future needs such as: data sharing, cybersecurity, communication, citizen participation, transparency, autonomy, processes, continuity of operations, digital tools, cyber awareness. The end-users also outlined the need to include the notions of autonomous energy systems, public info sharing and public alerting, and multi-source information gathering in the tools to be developed. The notions of convergence of digital tools and solutions to articulate information and management, convergence of information for crisis centre monitoring for the best-human decisions and the notion of information vs decision with the support of AI, were also discussed.
Domain #3: Public spaces protection – major events
Domain #3 workshop revealed the number-one priority of a representative from a Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) in case of incidents: evacuating people, organise routes for evacuation and eliminate the threat as soon as possible. They also underlined the need for deeper communication betweenprivate security companies, suggesting it could be improved through a mobile application for example. A municipality representative also underlined that experimentations must permit to remove doubts and confirm the operational utility.
The needs of end-users focused on several important aspects: the need to guide the emergency team, ensure a good information distribution and a social media analysis, use targeted video surveillance for brawl detection, crowd detection, and prevention of accidents, weapons detection, and the need to move towards shared information.
