CERIS FCT 2022

On April 4^th, the EC organized in Brussels the workshop of CERIS FCT, regarding the protection of public spaces. The workshop brought together law enforcement practitioners, policy makers, researchers (from both academic and industrial community) and public spaces (and soft targets) representatives, to discuss the impacts of Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe and ISF Police projects from this portfolio.

Public Spaces and Soft Targets, such as public buildings, sports venues, shopping malls, schools, and transportation systems, are locations that are easily accessible to large numbers of people and very hard to protect, making them vulnerable to attack.

The sectors covered by the (Critical Entities Resilience) CER Directive, such as Transportation and Public Administration, do include assets that can be characterized as a public space or soft target. The Space sector has also been identified under the same Directive, as one that do include critical entities. All these sectors and many more identified, need to be carefully and efficiently protected, in order to provide vital services to the community in a safe and resilient way.

Ilias Gkotsis, from Satways R&D Dept., had the chance to share knowledge, experiences and research findings in order to identify current achievements, best practices and possible synergies with the European projects addressing similar needs in the security field as 7SHIELD.

The workshop consisted of three main parts: application of Smart Cities technologies, cases of public events, and balance between security and privacy. The valuable knowledge and lessons learned, will support further development of the tools (more specifically the CIRP-RAT and the ENGAGE CSIM) developed by Satways within the project