The CRiTERIA project is organized into 10 work packages, which are structured into 4 tracks: a Foundational Track, a Methodology Track, a Technology Track and an Impact Track.
The Foundational Track includes foundational activities for framing the overall project work. This framing includes: a) overall organization and coordination of the project work (WP1), b) deepening the understanding of the requirements of the target community (framing with respect to requirements, WP2), c) creating a legal, ethical and societal framework for the project activities (WP4) and d) consideration of further Ethics Requirements (WP10).
The Methodology Track, which is closely interlinked with the Technology Track, contains the central work package working on extended risk analysis methodology.
The Technology Track organizes the technology-related activities of the project, including work packages focusing on the development of technologies for supporting the identification and analysis of migration related risks (WP5 and WP6) and work packages for the integration of the aforementioned technologies into the CRiTERIA system (WP7).
The WPs in the highly relevant Impact Track tackle project impact from two perspectives: the validation of the developed methods and tools via pilots (WP8) and the effective dissemination and exploitation of project results (W9). The Figure below shows the 10 work packages of the CRiTERIA project, their main interactions, and their organization into the four tracks.
Work Packages – Overview
- WP1. Project Management & Coordination
- WP2. Demand Analysis & Forecasting for Border control Units and Policy makers
- WP3. Risk Analysis & Vulnerability Assessment
Models and Methodology - WP4. Legal and Ethical Compliance, and Societal Acceptance
- WP5. Data Analysis Methods
- WP6. Methods for Explainable Data Validation and Risk Linkage
- WP7. Visual Analytics Dashboard and System Integration
- WP8. Pilots, Validation and Training
- WP9. Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation
- WP10. Ethics Requirements
WP1: Project Management & Coordination (LUH)
Objectives
The project management encompasses contractual issues, technical, administrative, finance, communication and knowledge management inside the project, and external relationships between the project and the EC. The Project Coordinator will lead the work package, but will be assisted by members of the CRiTERIA management team including the Research Manager, the Integration Manager, the Innovation Manager and the work package leaders. This WP has the following objectives:
- Ensure effective planning, implementation, coordination and achievement of the project activities, including timely production of deliverables and successful completion of the tasks.
- Provide project structure and support to assist decision making, internal and external communications, encourage accountability and control, minimise risk, identify and exploit project-related opportunities.
- Coordinate quality control for project output and help the consortium achieve their project objectives.
WP2: Demand Analysis & Forecasting for Border control Units and Policy makers (EPBG)
Objectives
It is a goal of this WP to develop an improved and more detailed understanding of the demands and expectations of the target groups towards the planned CRiTERIA risk and threat analysis methods and solutions. This embraces the underlying analysis methodology, the functionality of the technical solutions, the operational needs and constraints as well as the actionable insights to be produced by the project. The results of this WP provide the basis for the activities in the development of the risk analysis methodology in WP3, the technical WPs involved in data analysis and validation methods (WP5 and WP6), for WP7 working on the system architecture as well as for WP8 (Pilots). Furthermore, a close interaction with WP4 is planned to already consider the legal, ethical and societal framework (early results) in this early phase of the project.
WP3: Risk Analysis & Vulnerability Assessment Models and Methodology Work package number 3 Lead beneficiary (UM)
Objectives
The aim of WP3 is to:
a) develop composite indicators for risk analysis and vulnerability assessment which will enable border security to better tackle complex security problems; one of the new categories of indicators is a sentiment indicator, which would enable practitioners to integrate beliefs and behaviours of risk communities/groups into their risk analysis;
b) strengthen risk analysis and vulnerability assessment methods by: adding a “qualitative layer” (e.g. extracting risk factors from unstructured information); creating ontologies which will enable a better description of security threats; introducing a humanitarian/human rights dimension; introducing risk integration and risk propagation models to border security risk analysis;
c) develop risk analysis methodologies which take into account national and European specificities; and c to explore the role of intelligence sharing practices in risk analysis for border security.
WP4: Legal and Ethical Compliance, and Societal Acceptance (RUG)
Objectives
CRiTERIA is built on strong respect for the rule of law, fundamental rights in particular rights to privacy, data protection and expression. Moreover, CRiTERIA will be implemented taking in account the features of very complex phenomena and in alignment with social expectations of the involved actors. Gender and other intersectional differences will be carefully considered. Therefore, there are the following two main objectives for this WP:
- To ensure that solutions developed and exploited by the consortium, its partners and stakeholders are compliant with ethical principles, applicable data protection legislation and other legal frameworks.
- To ensure that the solutions developed are acceptable to the different social groups affected by them and by society at large.
WP5: Data Analysis Methods (CERTH)
Objectives
This WP develops and implements methods for the collection of multimodal (audio/video/text) data from online sources and their processing and analysis. The data (including associated metadata) coming out of the initial stages of analysis are used for identifying narratives, predicting trends, and ultimately supporting the detection of threat indicators from online and social media content. Specifically, WP5 develops methods for:
- the targeted collection of migration-related content from online sources, and the anonymization (or pseudo-anonymization) of the content where appropriate;
- the analysis of audio-visual content, to extract textual transcripts by means of (multilingual) automatic speech recognition (ASR), and visual media annotations in the form of concept and sentiment labels;
- the automatic detection and analysis of newly-evolving and influential narratives from multimodal content, building on top of the lower-level audio-visual analysis results (ASR, visual media annotation);
- the detection and prediction of trends, building explainable and reproducible deep learning techniques that not only make predictions from the analyzed content but also generate human-understandable explanations of them;
- consolidating (summarizing or fusing) the above results for detecting generic risk indicators from online, social media content.
WP6: Methods for Explainable Data Validation and Risk Linkage (L3S)
Objectives
It is the goal of this project to bridge the gap between (combined) evidences for events, trends bias, risks, threats etc. found with methods of media and data analysis (see WP5) and reliable risk and threat analysis results in the context of migration. This embraces four types of objectives:
a) making more explicit the uncertainties, which come with automatically extracted evidences,
b) explaining the ways, in which findings were achieved,
c) semi-automatic support for the validation of such findings and
d) to explore ways, in which the user can be supported in the important tasks of identifying risk interactions and pattern of risk propagation.
Work in this WP will build upon the requirements collected in WP2, the development of the extended risk and threat analysis methods and the threat linkage defined in WP3 and the data and media analysis methods developed in WP5 and the evidences identified by those methods. The technologies as well as the explanation and validation approaches developed in this WP will contribute to the CRiTERIA system developed in WP7.
WP7: Visual Analytics Dashboard and System Integration (WLT)
Objectives
WP7 will integrate the technology developed in CRiTERIA into a modular and flexible data analysis platform with a visual analytics dashboard to track evolving narratives and risks, enabling analysts to explore the collected knowledge resources along multiple metadata dimensions. The CRiTERIA platform will be developed in an agile manner, continuously evolving to incorporate new requirements as they emerge during the project, delivering a first prototype early in the project and publishing new releases in successive development cycles. WP7 will also develop interfaces to provide the developed CRiTERIA technology to existing third-party analytics tools. WP7 will interact with WP2 taking up the requirements and with WP5 and WP6 for integrating the technologies developed in these WPs. Furthermore, WP7 will interact with WP8 by providing the prototype for piloting.
WP8: Pilots, Validation and Training (UM)
Objectives
The aim of this WP is to test and validate the different components of the CRiTERIA system developed in WP5-7 in 5 countries: Estonia, Romania, Croatia, Malta and Sweden using the scenarios and models prepared in WP2 & WP3. The results of each pilot will be closely monitored and fed to the risk analysis and technical team, thus allowing the system to be improved from one pilot to the next. The activities of this WP will include the time planning, technical and logistical preparation of the labs and pilots, setup of pilot systems and analysis of their result. In the evaluation and validation of the CRiTERIA system, we will rely on benchmark tools for user satisfaction such as described alongside the KPIs earlier in the document. This WP will also focus on the development of a training module for border security staff aimed at familiarizing them with the novel risk analysis methodologies and tools.
WP9: Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation (HENS)
Objectives
The role of this work package is to ensure that target audiences receive information about the project which will support the maximum exploitation of its results. WP9 will collaborate closely with all work packages, which together contribute to the success of the project and the exploitation of its results. The objectives of WP 9 are:
- To disseminate knowledge about the project to stakeholders and specific target groups
- To establish and carry out dissemination and communication activities based on the strategies which are closely linked to the excellence and impacts of the project.
- To develop a communication and dissemination strategy, which is based on cross-fertilisation and close cooperation of consortium partners.
- To address needs of target groups by efficient communication and dissemination activities
- To create and implement an exploitation strategy together with relevant stake-holders, end-users and industrial partners, ensuring sustainability for CRiTERIA during and after the projects’ life.
- To influence end-user’s key decision makers to adopt and promote the project’s results.
- To design and promote the project identity, creating the project’s website and targeted promotional material
WP10: Ethics Requirements (LUH)
Objectives
This work package sets out the ‘ethics requirements’ that the project must comply with.
- To design and promote the project identity, creating the project’s website and targeted promotional material