Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LETS-CROWD (Law Enforcement agencies human factor methods and Toolkit for the Security and protection of CROWDs in mass gatherings)

Teaser

LETSCROWD will overcome challenges preventing the effective implementation of the European Security Model with regards to mass gatherings. This will be achieved by providing a set of outcomes to security policy practitioners and in particular, Law Enforcement Agencies...

Summary

LETSCROWD will overcome challenges preventing the effective implementation of the European Security Model with regards to mass gatherings. This will be achieved by providing a set of outcomes to security policy practitioners and in particular, Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).
The effects of criminal activities and terrorism can be wide-ranging and they can include direct and indirect, tangible and intangible costs of attacks, psychological effects upon the population, and the social and political impacts, also in the medium and long term.
In other words, security becomes a common good that needs to be built together in a networked framework through the collaborations among public authorities, law enforcement agencies, policy makers and citizens, able to foster and maintain security social capital.
The overall project objective is to create guidelines for the implementation of the European Security Model for the protection of crowds during mass gatherings based on human factors accompanied by a set of supporting toolkits.
The specific objectives are the following:
O1. Develop a common European understanding about security issues for crowd protection during mass gatherings. This will be achieved by (1) developing an extension of the European Security Model implementation guidelines specific to the needs of crowd protection during mass gatherings in the form of a tailored risk assessment methodology, and (2) creating effective communication and cooperation channels for European LEA’s, emergency services and citizens to facilitate the interchange of information, improve the citizen´s awareness and provide general methods, best practices and strategies for protecting crowds
O2. Develop a Policy-making platform for security policy-makers to facilitate decision making processes and achieve efficient and effective policies for prevention, investigation and mitigation of criminal and terrorist acts in mass gatherings
O3. Develop human-centred Toolkit for LEAs composed by innovative crowd behaviour models and crowd assessment tool, procedures and communication strategies, semantic intelligence tools and human-centred computer vision and video analysis. In all of these areas LETS-CROWD will cover specific state of the art gaps not covered yet
O4. Perform practical demonstrations to assess project outcomes involving piloting actions related to policy making decisions, cooperation between LEAs (training, prevention, preparedness and response exercises and drills), population awareness campaigns, data collection of public opinion and citizens acceptance, etc
O5. Analyse public opinion or mood on mass scale in relation to policies and actions for protecting people in mass gatherings against criminal and terrorist acts. This will complement the Eurobarometer and help policy makers, LEAs and other interested parties to make informed evaluations and assess the impact of events or actions on public perception.
O6. Dissemination, communication of results and post project deployment and large scale adoption. The aim of dissemination is to maximise the visibility, credibility and impact of the project in order to foster adoption of LETS-CROWD’s results on a long-term basis by creating a network of researchers and actors around the theme of crowds’ protection during mass gatherings. Exploitation of results will be achieved in two different yet complementary dimensions: at research level and at industrial level

Work performed

The overall LETSCROWD objective is to create guidelines for the implementation of the European Security Model in the protection of crowds during mass gatherings based on the human factors accompanied by a set supporting toolkits. This will involve new methods, policies, designs, tools and the piloting actions. The work performed according to the specific objectives are the following:
O1: A first version of a tailored risk assessment methodology has been delivered and documented during the first year of the project. The novelty and innovation of this tailored risk assessment methodology come by the integration of weak signals in the risk assessment exercise carried out by LEAs, the new approach combines the currently widely used static risk assessment with a dynamic one.
O2: A first version of the policy making toolkit has been delivered with limited functionality, but it is expected to be completed during the second phase of the project. The policy making toolkit allows policy makers to define security strategies for a given event, it also shows relevant existing policies that must be taken into consideration by decision makers. The tool will also create a common database for LEAs showing innovative policy procedures.
O3: A first version of the Crowd Modelling and Planning tool, Innovative Communication Procedures, Semantic intelligence (together with a Web Crawling engine) and Computer vision for crowd have been developed and delivered.
O4: Not only does LETSCROWD aim to develop a set of tools for different stakeholders to improve security of mass gatherings, but also these tools need to be validated with a direct involvement of the LEAs (Law Enforcement Agencies). To achieve Objective 4 several Practical Demonstrations (PDs) will be conducted as a proof-of-concept of the LETSCROWD outcomes (methodologies, guidelines, technical outputs and scientific concepts).
O6: In the first 12 months of project the LETCROWD consortium produced a detailed dissemination plan. In this year the project established graphical identity and a set of dissemination material has been produced.

Final results

The main aim of LETS-CROWD will be to develop a holistic approach that involves a collection of dedicated policy models, toolkits and demonstration actions that pool their resources and capabilities together to create a new system which offers more functionality and performance. LETS-CROWD is intended for Europe’s security policy decision makers, LEA’s, societal groups and other stakeholders who deal with crowd protection against criminal and terrorist acts in mass gatherings through all event phases.
IMPACT
SOCIAL IMPACT
Consequences of terrorist attacks and organised criminal activities during mass events usually go beyond the deaths and direct damages to infrastructures that they cause. The effects of criminal activities and terrorism can be wide-ranging and they can include direct and indirect, angible
and intangible costs of attacks, psychological effects upon the population (e.g., post trauma event disorders, depression, substance abuse), and the social and political impacts, also in the medium and long term. Enabling security as a societal value is a guiding principle of the research carried out in LETS-CROWD.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
it is worth to highlight two market areas where LETS-CROWD can be easily positioned in a competitive way, these are the video surveillance and the text analytics.
The video surveillance software market and video management software is expected to be in high demand, along with video analytics, as demand increases for Internet Protocol (IP)-based video surveillance systems, and here it is where LETS-CROWD can find a market niche.
Similarly text analytics market, while structured data can provide some context, unstructured data sources contain several orders of magnitude more context, but defining the context by finding structures, patterns, and meaning in unstructured data is not a simple process. As a result, firms face a gap between data and insights.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.letscrowd.eu.