Protecting Public Spaces, Ensuring Safety
Enhancing Security with Cutting-Edge C-UAS Solutions: Explore the PRESERVE Project
Why do we need PRESERVE?
As described in the recent EU C-UAS policy for non-cooperative drones, “the modus operandi of terrorist groups and the enhanced skills in the use of ‘off the shelf drones’ could reach our borders and represent a threat”. It is undeniable that Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are a powerful tool that can be used for many legitimate purposes, but they can also be used for malicious goals if access to the technology is uncontrolled.
Despite the current challenges regarding interoperability and regulatory compliance, there is nowadays a wide range of technologies that can support Police Authorities. However, emerging threats are by far unmanageable by available technological means to Police Authorities, including heterogeneous drone swarms separated in time and space and AI-autopiloted drones. These attacks have the potential to have a significantly larger impact to soft targets compared to single drone attacks, especially at mass gatherings, such as parks and squares, sporting arenas and stadiums, shopping centres, etc, while risk remains low for the perpetrator, as it is performed remotely. Furthermore, the current open-source access to drone swarming technology, combined with the trafficking of weapons through DarkWeb marketplaces, is likely to resort into new radicalisation tactics by terrorist networks, including the dissemination of online training material.
What will PRESERVE do?
PRESERVE will deliver a multidimensional shield allowing Police Authorities to tackle the so far unmanageable threat of weaponised recreational/consumer drone swarms through open-source knowledge by non-state actors. The following elements will drive the development and demonstration in order to provide harmonized, effective and concrete solutions:
- Better understanding of the relevant emerging modus operandi of such forms of terrorist attack and crime organisations, including online and offline indicators.
- Improved preparedness and uncertainty management, by detecting weak signals and performing pre-event threat assessment, based on online monitoring and analysis, allowing attack prevention and sound planning of operational resources.
- Enhanced target anticipation, response time and situational awareness by leveraging the latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the fields of computer vision, signal processing and multimodal analytics, enabling multi-layered countermeasures.
- Improved capacity building of Police Authorities based on the advanced tools and solutions developed, and the PRESERVE Training Programme, including a novel C-UAS Training System.
- Timely and effective international cooperation and decision making, through innovative decision-support tools, information sharing solutions (Knowledge Hub), and harmonised operational procedures fully compliant with regulatory and ethical requirements.
- Improved regulation shaping and tuning by providing policy recommendations derived from the analysis of modus operandi, the evaluation of the developed tools, and by building upon recommendations provided by relevant projects.
PRESERVE Consortium
At the foundation of PRESERVE, there are unique strengths. With four Police Authorities, six University/Research Institutions, four Industry partners (including three SMEs), two Regulatory, Policy, Standards and Social experts and two Affiliated Entities, PRESERVE consortium delivers a strong multidisciplinary combination of expertise and novel technologies to meet its objectives.
