EU-HYBNET is a Pan-European network of security practitioners, stakeholders, academics, industry players, and SME actors across EU collaborating with each other in ever increasing numbers to counter hybrid threats. EU-HYBNET aims to build an empowered, sustainable network beyond the scope of the project through its on-going association with a key partner, The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, and it will: define common requirements that can fill knowledge gaps, deal with performance needs, and enhance capabilities of innovation endeavours; monitor significant developments in research and innovation; deliver recommendations for uptake and industrialisation of the most promising innovations that address the needs of practitioners, and determine associated priorities for standardisation; establish conditions for enhanced interaction among its members; and persistently strive to increase its membership and continually build network capacity through knowledge exchange incl. exercises. EU-HYBNET's principal objectives align with the H2020 SEC-SU-GM01-2019 call and are of crucial relevance to it. A technology and innovations watch, facilitated by scientific research, will ensure smooth execution of searching, monitoring, identifying and assessing innovations both under development or already proven, including the level of technology readiness for uptake or industrialisation. EU-HYBNET will bring together practitioners and stakeholders to identify and define their most urgent requirements for countering hybrid threats by undertaking an in-depth analysis of gaps and needs and prioritising those that are crucial to address through effective research and innovation initiatives, including arranging training and exercise events to test the most promising innovations (technical and social) which will lead to creation of a roadmap for success and solid recommendations for uptake, industrialisation and standarisation across the European Union.

Though security is a field of study capable of diverse applications in daily life, security science is a young discipline requiring larger inter-disciplinary effort. ESSENTIAL seeks to develop security science by addressing two of its main problems: the ad-hoc approach to security research and the growing complexity of the security environment. To do so, ESSENTIAL has set itself two main goals: a) to train inter-disciplinary security experts and professionals, to tackle security threats in a systematic manner and b) to increase societal resilience and security by addressing in an interdisciplinary manner 15 research topics, each associated with long-standing problems in the field of security science ranging from modeling security perception and democratizing intelligence to improving security and privacy in data ecosystems. ESSENTIAL will be the first programme of its kind that aims to jointly educate the next generation of interdisciplinary experts in security science, by uniquely exposing the 15 ESRs to: (1) theoretical knowledge and practical expertise in such areas as: (a) the policing and regulation of information-security technology, and (b) the implementation of policies and legal standards within computing and communication systems; (2) real-world environments in law enforcement, intelligence and industry; (3) strong academic guidance offered by highly qualified supervisors and mentors; (4) high tech research infrastructures; and (5) a diversity of interdisciplinary research events, such as workshops, conferences, summer/winter schools. The ESSENTIAL consortium is built upon long-lasting cooperation relations among leading organizations coming from academia, international and national stakeholders and the private sector, many of whom have over 25 years of experience in contributing directly to national, European and UN technology-related policy making.

As risks are not “objective” but socially and culturally constructed, disaster management which is aware, respects, and makes use of local cultural aspects will be not only more effective but, at the same time, also improve the community’s disaster coping capacities. CARISMAND is setting out to identify these factors, to explore existing gaps and opportunities for improvement of disaster policies and procedures, and to develop a comprehensive toolkit which will allow professional as well as voluntary disaster managers to adopt culturally-aware everyday practices. This goal will be achieved by approaching the links, and gaps, between disaster management, culture and risk perception from the broadest possible multi-disciplinary perspective and, simultaneously, developing a feedback-loop between disaster management stakeholders and citizens to establish, test, and refine proposed solutions for culturally-informed best practices in disaster management. Whilst experts from a variety of fields (in particular legal, IT, cognitive science, anthropology, psychology, sociology) will undertake a comprehensive collation of existing knowledge and structures, a number of Citizen Summits and Stakeholder Assemblies will be organised. Systematically, CARISMAND will use an approach that examines natural, man-made and technical disasters, placing at the centre of attention specific aspects that affect culturally informed risk perceptions, eg whether disasters are caused intentionally or not, the different “visibility” of hazards, and various time scales of disasters such as slow/fast onset and short- and long-term effects. By organising six Citizen Summits (two per disaster category per year in two separate locations) where such disaster risks are prevalent , and three Stakeholder Assemblies (one per year) where the results are discussed through a wide cross-sectional knowledge transfer between disaster managers from different locations as well as from different cultural backgrounds.

Theories underlying community policing received new impetus with the recent advent of smartphones and social media and especially user-generated content (UGC) where citizens engage in closer interaction with their local community and law enforcement agency (LEA). The years 2010-2014 have seen a rapid upsurge of smartphone apps aimed at improving crime reporting and other forms of UGC and interaction associated with community policing. Yet these apps are characterised by a predominantly Anglo-Saxon approach with the largest number originating in the USA, a few in Canada, Australia and with the UK apparently the only major EU state where there has been some take-up of these technologies. CITYCoP sets out to find out why the EU appears to be lagging behind although Community Policing is nominally a policy which has been put into action in a number of EU countries. It then goes on to develop a solution including a new smartphone app and on-line portal which are capable of being deployed in any European city while still retaining “local flavour” and diversity. These ICT solutions will also be designed from scratch to be fully compliant with strict privacy and data protection laws. A training scheme, including use of serious games, will be developed to assist training of officers and citizens in use of the app and portal. CITYCoP will benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach that will include the sociology of community policing as well as cognitive science perspectives of the citizen’s interaction with community and LEAs through technology. The partners in CITYCoP build on long years of successful collaboration in EU projects dealing with UGC, smart surveillance and privacy (CONSENT, SMART, RESPECT) positioning CITYCoP solutions to achieve integration into smart city eco-systems. CITYCoP will pilot deployments of multi-lingual smartphone apps, portals and serious games training packages in Bucharest (Romania), Lisbon (Portugal), Florence (Italy), Sheffield (UK).

INSET is aimed at developing complex and trans-disciplinary competences which are needed in understanding the dynamics of the 21st century world which is increasingly technology-based, hostile from a security perspective, and highly volatile. It advances an inter- and multidisciplinary approach that combines critical studies in intelligence, security governance and technologies while bridging these areas of study and to transferring specialized knowledge and competencies from specialists and practitioners in the field towards civil society. Based on the inter-connectivity between all these areas of study new skills and knowledge (usually developed within the closed fields of security and intelligence) can be developed and used in addressing social complex problems. However, this transfer has received little attention from universities. Very recent and ardent topics as cybersecurity, hybrid warfare, climate change, fake news, polarization and radicalization require developing and practicing transversal skills which can only be developed in inter and multi-disciplinary programs. Such topics cannot be addressed in a silo manner as separate, specialized disciplines of study. Hence, the master program seeks to advance a new framework of understanding based on transferring knowledge and competencies that are traditionally attributed to the closed fields of security and intelligence to other fields of practice which could benefit from them (e.g. for identifying and addressing fake news, deep fakes, the social engineering techniques combined with artificial intelligence used in conditioning opinions, for applying digital literacy in technology understanding etc.). By providing a common framework and support for networking, it will foster academic cooperation among partners and, accordingly, it will enhance the partners’ capabilities to modernize their curricula and teaching practices.