CRiTERIA brings together an interdisciplinary consortium of leading researchers, companies and practitioners from border agencies. The project topic of developing a risk analysis and vulnerability assessment model for the detection of migration-related threats in a well-founded, comprehensive way is indeed a multi-disciplinary challenge and accordingly requires expertise in a wide spectrum of scientific areas. The consortium has been assembled to precisely cover this wide spectrum of required competences, ranging from ICT and Artificial Intelligence competences such as multimedia and social media analysis, over social science analysis to competences in security research.
Project Coordinator
Leibniz Universität Hannover (L3S Research Center)
The L3S Research Center is a joint research institute of several universities in Lower Saxony, Germany formally associated with Leibniz Universität Hannover. L3S focuses on AI-based research and the development of innovative and cutting-edge methods and technologies for systems, which are intelligent (characterized by learning processes that allow the acquisition of new skills and deal with a large amount of heterogeneous, uncertain, and probabilistic data), reliable (ensuring the reliability of the ever more complex networked and autonomous intelligent systems), and responsible (both reflecting social needs and explore and assess possible effects on personal freedom of development, democratic principles, and social interaction). The institute’s research has achieved high recognition both in Germany and abroad.
ARSIS Association for the Social Support of Youth
ARSIS – Association for the Social Support of Youth is a Greek NGO operating in the field of child and youth protection. ARSIS was founded in 1992 and its main aim is to protect children at risk, as well as assist the re-integration of vulnerable groups such as the homeless, ex-prisoners, the unemployed, etc. The protection of socially disadvantaged groups that are threatened with social exclusion and marginalization lies at the core of the organization’s aims, while advocating for their rights. ARSIS participates in the project as a national non-governmental organization of Greece with extended action in the refugee crisis, and as a Human Rights expert.
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Information Technologies Institute
CERTH, founded in 2000, is the largest research centre in Northern Greece and one of the largest in the country. The participating team, which is part of the Intelligent Digital Transformation Laboratory (IDT) of the Information Technologies Institute (ITI) of CERTH, has significant experience and scientific expertise in machine learning and deep learning, and the scalable processing and understanding of various types of unstructured data, such as multimedia and video content.
CERIDES – Excellence in Innovation and Technology, European University Cyprus
The Centre for Risk and Decision Sciences (CERIDES) provides a holistic offering to academia, policy makers and the business (industrial) sectors of educational (taught), training, research and consulting solutions. CERIDES focuses on the development, use and evaluation of quantitative and qualitative methods in order to measure, assess, manage and communicate risk, and to analyse, design and implement decision-making mechanisms and systems.
Conoscenza e Innovazione Srls
Conoscenza e Innovazione (K&I) is a social research organisation based in Rome. Its members are social scientists that have been participating in many projects in the framework of the Research programmes of European Union on issues such as international migration; ecological responsibility and energy transition, environmental sustainability, socialisation of scientific research, public engagement and responsible research and innovation (RRI); gender and science; societal issues related to natural and man-made hazards; social exclusion, social cohesion and social polarisation; privacy and security; etc. K&I carries out activities in Italy, in Europe and worldwide, using an interdisciplinary approach.
Estonian Police and Border Guard Board
Estonian Police and Border Guard Board (Politsei- ja Piirivalveamet) is developing cooperations with other national authorities, local government units, public organizations, citizens and their communities, and other countries and international law enforcement bodies. There are approximately 5000 people working in the name of internal security of Estonia in Police and Border Guard Board making it one of the biggest state agencies in Estonia. They bring extensive practical experience in integration of different components of internal security and public safety.
General Inspectorate of Romanian Border Police
The Romanian Border Police is part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and is the specialized state institution, which carries out the tasks related to the surveillance and control of the crossing of the state border. Responsible for approximately 3,150 km of borders, the Romanian Border Police permanently deals with the extremely varied problems and illegal means of transiting the Romanian border, starting with the illegal migration, drugs, guns and stolen vehicles trafficking and finishing with smuggling – in all its forms of manifestation. The General Inspectorate of Romanian Border Police contributes to the CRiTERIA methodology and cooperates with the rest of the partners in developing the CRiTERIA Risk and Vulnerability analysis methodology bringing in their unique know-how and experience.
HENSOLDT Analytics
HENSOLDT Analytics is a global leading provider of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) systems and Natural Language Processing technologies, such as Automatic Speech Recognition, which are key elements for media monitoring and analysis. HENSOLDT Analytics focuses on end-to-end systems and tools that can efficiently extract and analyse information from open sources (TV, radio, blogs, social media, etc.) and turn them into actionable intelligence, employing cutting-edge technologies across multiple languages, geographies and sources that have been developed with a focus on the requirements of situational awareness.
Idiap Research Institute
The Idiap Research Institute is an independent, not-for-profit, research institute affiliated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL). Funded by the Federal Government, the State of Valais, and the City of Martigny, Idiap is involved in R&D activities in statistical machine learning with applications in speech, audio and visual processing, natural language understanding multimodal processing, biometric authentication, and multimedia indexing. Idiap is involved in numerous national and international projects, as well as in multiple collaborative projects with the industry.
Malta Police Force – Immigration Unit
The Malta Police Force is one of the oldest police forces in Europe. The Malta Police has a mixed responsibility in respect of its investigative role and national security. The Immigration Units’ principal task is to control the island’s points of entry, which include checks aimed at suppressing illegal immigration, preventing illegal entry of foreigners and detection of false documents. In the CRiTERIA project, the Malta Police Force team contributes to the required collection activities, to the validation of risk analysis and vulnerability assessment methodologies, and the piloting of the CRiTERIA tools.
Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Croatia
The police is a public service of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia that performs certain tasks prescribed by law, the so-called police affairs. The Police Directorate is established for the performance of police affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, as an administrative organization within the Ministry, while police administrations operate at the local level. The Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Croatia contributes their valuable know-how and experience to the CRiTERIA project.
National Operations Department, Swedish Police Authority
The Swedish Police Authority tasks and objectives are to prevent crime, monitor public order and safety, conduct reconnaissance, carry out criminal investigations and is also responsible for Swedish border control. The Swedish Police Authority has a long experience in carrying out investigations with international links, and has engagements in intelligence operations stretching across borders. Information collection by information technology and digital forensics is still being developed. OSINT has been of interest for a long time but is a sprawling area and is very much untapped, which motivates NOA to participate in the CRiTERIA project. Developments in the area of risk analysis for border control and for prevention and detection of cross border crime are expected to benefit cooperation between intelligence units and border control units for both strategic and operational planning.
University of Groningen
The Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen is one of the largest faculties in the Netherlands and has a strong research tradition in a number of fields including European law, information technology law, constitutional law, international law, public law, civil law and a variety of interdisciplinary fields. STeP, the ‘Security, Technology and e-Privacy Research Group’, is an interdisciplinary team of researchers organised within the Department of Transboundary Legal Studies. The team covers many areas of information policy & technology law including privacy, data protection, security science, surveillance, cybercrime, self-regulation and health informatics. In the CRiTERIA project, the University of Groningen leads the Work Package on Legal, Societal and Ethical issues.
University of Malta
The University of Malta traces its origins to the founding of the Collegium Melitense which was set up through direct papal intervention on 12 November 1592. It is today the highest educational institution in Malta, publicly funded and comprises 14 faculties attracting students from over 80 countries. The Department of Information Policy & Governance (IPG) is part of the Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences (MaKS). Over the past ten years IPG has led international efforts to formalise the theoretical underpinnings and applied-side methodologies of the emerging discipline today recognized as security science.
webLyzard technology
webLyzard technology is an Austrian SME founded in 2008 with a focus on Web intelligence and visual analytics research. The unique capabilities of its big data platform are based on a strong R&D track record (Horizon 2020, FP7, Google DNI, FFG) and the extensive expertise of its founders in the fields of knowledge extraction and visualization, human-computer interaction, and the integration of geospatial and semantic Web technologies. The webLyzard technology platform supports a wide range of use cases including data-driven brand communication and success metrics, news data value chains and semantic search for corporate publishing.