FCT – Multimodal Data Fusion and Analytics Group

OSPREY

OSPREY OSPREY - Online Safety and Security for Protection of Public-Facing Professionals and Democratic Resilience Public-facing professionals (PFPs) form the backbone of modern democratic institutions. Yet in recent years, the erosion of democratic values has exposed journalists, judges, elected officials, and others who operate in the public eye, to growing levels of hostility and risk. The visible nature of their work makes them vulnerable to online harms, understood as behaviours in digital environments that may inflict physical, emotional, or reputational damage. With the rapid expansion of AI-driven content generation and manipulation, these threats now extend not only to PFPs themselves but also to their families, whose personal lives can be targeted, amplified, or fabricated at scale. Despite the urgency of the issue, efforts to understand and mitigate online harms against…

Detector

Detector Deepfake Evidence and Technology for Forensic Content Oversight and Research AI is transforming law enforcement, offering new tools for policing but also enabling advanced criminal tactics that challenge traditional methods. The global nature of crime, including cyber threats, trafficking, and terrorism, calls for innovative solutions as LEAs face vast data volumes and increasingly sophisticated criminal activities. AI has raised concerns with deepfakes—highly realistic but fake audio, video, or text that can depict individuals saying or doing things they never did. Deepfakes pose serious risks, impacting politics, economy, and social trust. Examples include fabricated videos of political figures and voice-cloned audio for financial fraud, often spread through social networks to deceive and defraud on a large scale. Forensic institutes and courts struggle to differentiate authentic evidence from AI fabrications, especially…

KOBAN

KOBAN Identifying future capabilities for Community Policing Across Europe society is changing due to demographic, technological and economic developments. Communities are getting more diverse, both in real life and online. This challenges Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to engage with, and to reassure, communities about safety and security matters in a trustful way. The changing status quo is significantly shaping perceptions of policing, requiring adaptive strategies. To address these challenges, the KOBAN project will create an innovative, research and practice-based Community Policing (CP) initiative, adopting an evidence-based approach. It will focus on co-creation and collaborative security between LEA and non-LEA community members, leading to mutual trust and respecting each other’s contributions. This results in a greater sense of security, whilst contributing to an overall increase in the efficiency and effectiveness of…

SAFEGUARD

SAFEGUARD SAFEguardinG pUblic spAces through intelligent thReat Detection tools SAFEGUARD aims at developing a next-generation holistic suite of tools that significantly improve LEA capabilities to protect public spaces against terrorist attacks through the entire lifecycle of their operations. To this end, SAFEGUARD leverages the successful outcomes of EU-funded projects (S4AllCities, CONNEXIONs, CREST, PREVISION, PRAETORIAN), providing a complete and powerful framework for intelligent threat detection relevant to the context of safety of public spaces. The outcomes of the project will result in the improvement of public spaces, such as malls, open crowded areas and events by deploying tools and technologies for acquiring intelligence regarding terrorist attacks and supporting LEA operations in an efficient and effective manner. Moreover, SAFEGUARD aspires to develop knowledge on the potential use of AI techniques and algorithms…

ENSEMBLE

ENSEMBLE ENhanced AI-baSEd cybercriMe-oriented collaBorative investigation technologies and capabiLitiEs ENSEMBLE aims to enhance the capabilities of multiple stakeholders involved in (cross-border) joint cybercrime-oriented investigations by developing (i) a modular AI-based forensically sound investigation ToolBox to assist LEAs in fighting sophisticated cyber-threats and cybercrimes, (ii) relevant training material for Police Authorities, prosecutors, and judicial actors involved in such investigations, and (iii) appropriate public awareness campaigns for early identification and prevention of cybercrimes. M4D is responsible for the coordination of the ENSEMBLE project and is also tasked with its Scientific and Technical management. M4D contains a critical role across the whole project as the leader of the Work Package that is responsible for the development of AI-based tools that are used to enhance the decision support during investigations, the correlation of data…

ARIEN

ARIEN ARtificial IntelligencE in fighting illicit drugs production and traffickiNg ARIEN proposes the execution of a comprehensive workplan that thoroughly addresses the call topic aligned to the 2021-2025 EU Drugs Action Plan achieved through a holistic innovation action that builds a real-time intelligence picture for illegal drug production and trafficking incidence across the EU. This action is bolstered by AI-driven tools to understand, detect, analyse and track the entire drugs trafficking chain, its financial flows and the role of black-markets in the global darknet and their relationships with social media. ARIEN builds on a strong platform of multi-disciplinary research, following a co-creation approach, across the criminological, societal, and legislative landscapes. The designed platform will make recommendations for harmonization and drive an agenda for the development of modular solutions embedding modern…

VANGUARD

VANGUARD adVANced technoloGical solutions coupled with societal-oriented Understanding and AwaReness for Disrupting trafficking in human beings VANGUARD aims to strengthen the fight against trafficking in human beings (THB) at the nexus of advanced technological solutions, understanding, awareness raising, and training to disrupt the trafficking chain at an early stage and address the culture of impunity. It aims to provide an improved intelligence picture of THB, with particular focus on THB for purposes of sexual exploitation, labour exploitation, and forced criminality. This will be achieved through developing a modular and trustworthy suite of tools for detecting, identifying, investigating, and preventing online-facilitated THB activities and THB-related activities at (border) checkpoints based on the analysis of online multimedia content and multimodal streams, by leveraging the latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI). It will…

FALCON

FALCON Fight Against Large-scale Corruption and Organised Crime Networks Current evidence suggests that the global fight against corruption faces serious challenges: policy decisions are not well informed, the corruption landscape is complex and enormous, while measuring corruption is so far mostly based on subjective approaches, and there is lack of appropriate technological tools to support anti-corruption. To address these challenges, FALCON is designed and dedicated to support the composition, update and management of comprehensive corruption intelligence pictures, within domains and jurisdictions of interest. This will be accomplished following a multi-actor, evidence-based, data-driven approach, building upon existing assets and prior work of consortium partners. FALCON will, first, develop and validate objective and actionable indicators of corruption that can be used to inform policy decisions. Second, it will design, implement and integrate…

ALLIES

ALLIES AI-based framework for supporting micro (and small) HSPs on the report and removaL of onLIne tErroriSt content The ALLIES project aims at supporting micro (and small) HSPs in achieving compliance with the new requirements and obligations under the TCO Regulation. To achieve this, ALLIES adopts four main approaches, each targeting skill development and innovation. These four pillars will be respectively focused on (1) learning and awareness raising, (2) technical development and adaptation, (3) training and education, and (4) experience sharing and reporting mechanisms. Both the learning and awareness raising initiatives will further expand the capacity of the TCO Regulation by designing a taxonomy of online terrorist related behaviours. The second pillar will be focused on the development of a specific set of AI-boosted user-friendly tools that will enhance small…

CESAGRAM

CESAGRAM Towards a Comprehensive European Strategy Against tech-facilitated GRooming And Missing Child sexual abuse online is a growing phenomenon. The British National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) reported a 70% increase in the number of sexual communications with child offences in the last three years. The hotlines for missing children have reported concerns that grooming is an increasing factor in disappearances, particularly in cases of children who run away. In 2020, the second most common reason for children to contact Child Helplines was for reasons of violence of which 3,2% was online sexual abuse. Disappointingly, the COVID pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The COVID-19 crisis pushed 1.2 billion children out of schools, leading to children spending many more hours online. As Europol emphasised in its 2021…

PERIVALLON

PERIVALLON Protecting the EuRopean terrItory from organised enVironmentAl crime through inteLLigent threat detectiON tools PERIVALLON aims to provide an improved and comprehensive intelligence picture of organised environmental crime and develop effective and efficient tools and solutions for detecting and preventing such types of criminal activities and for assessing their environmental impact based on geospatial intelligence, remote sensing, scanning, online monitoring, analysis, correlation, risk assessment, and predictive analytics technologies, by leveraging the latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the fields of computer vision and multimodal analytics. As a result, enhanced investigation processes and methodologies will be derived through the capabilities provided by the developed tools and solutions, and the insights obtained though the proposed Environmental Crime Observatory. The capacity of end users (including Police Authorities and Border Guards) will also…

LAGO

LAGO LESSEN DATA ACCESS AND GOVERNANCE OBSTACLES LAGO will deliver the foundation for a trusted EU FTC Research Data Ecosystem (RDE) to address the so-called “Data Issue” in the FCT research landscape, i.e., the lack of domain-specific data in sufficient quality and quantity to enable appropriate training and testing of the developed methods, platforms and tools. LAGO will be instrumental in identifying common barriers and subsequently providing the structural, governance and technical foundations to foster and innovate data-oriented research collaboration among LEAs, security practitioners, relevant EU agencies, academic and industry researchers, policy makers and regulators. For this purpose,LAGO will develop an evidence-based and validated multi-actor Reference Architecture for the FCT RDE for these actors to deposit, share and co-create data and tools for FCT research purposes based on common rules,…

CTC

CTC Cut The Cord With the nature of terror incidents undergoing a technology-aided transformation (e.g. use of cryptocurrencies to enhance anonymity), the monitoring and analysis of financial transactions play a pivotal role in the effort to timely prevent actions and funding of global terrorism. Financial crime exploits every aspect of digital transformation and identifies non-traditional products for financing and supporting terrorist organisations, such as social media, cryptocurrencies, and other Financial Technologies. The prevention and disruption of terrorism financing requires international cooperation and advanced investigative techniques based on new technologies. The CTC project (Cut The Cord) aims to enhance the public-private cooperation through the establishment of a wide stakeholder community, with the vision to sustain it beyond the end of the project. Joint training exercises (theoretical and hands-on) will be organised…

ODYSSEUS

ODYSSEUS Preventing, Countering and Investigation Terrorist Attacks Through Prognostic, Detection and Forensic Mechanisms for Explosive Precursors ODYSSEUS aims to increase the knowledge on homemade explosives (HMEs) and explosive precursors, including precursors not previously studied, and develop effective and efficient prognostic, detection, and forensic tools to improve the capabilities of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) towards the prevention, countering, and investigation of terrorist incidents involving HMEs. ODYSSEUS will build upon relevant previous projects mainly HOMER, through the involvement of HOMER’s core partners in this consortium, and will thus continue the work already performed in HOMER on some precursors and also further extend it to not previously studied precursors. To discover potentially hitherto unknown information, online HMEs recipes will be collected and their content will be analysed in order to extract knowledge about…

LAW-GAME

LAW-GAME An Interactive, Collaborative Digital Gamification Approach to Effective Experiential Training and Prediction of Criminal Actions Criminal incidents play an important role as a disturbance of European Unions’ welfare. Police forces face daily acts of crime, such as intentional homicide and assault, drug trafficking, human and illegal firearm trafficking, as well as other forms of illegal activities, associated with the presence of organized crime groups(OCGs) in the EU. It is very crucial to have trained security personnel with an orientation in detail and critical thinking. Skillful law enforcement officers are demanded to tackle effectively this type of incidents, who in most cases are not easily available. The improvement of law enforcement officers will increase both LEAs capabilities and effectiveness in the fight against crime and terrorism and protection of European…

AIDA

AIDA Artificial Intelligence and advanced Data Analytics for Law Enforcement Agencies The goal of AIDA is to provide Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) in the EU Member States (MS) with innovative, dedicated and sustainable digital technologies to facilitate the entire Big Data analytics cycle as part of their investigative and proactive prevention capabilities focused on cybercrime and counterterrorism. More specifically, AIDA will provide law enforcement across the EU with a modular capacity to acquire, (pre-)process, enrich, analyse and visualise multi-source Big Data in near real-time. The latter will shift the capacity of EU Member States to fight cybercrime and terrorism, while implementing governance procedures to maintain full compliance with fundamental rights and applicable legislation, including privacy and protection of personal data and ensure chain of custody. The AIDA framework will adapt…

TENSOR

TENSOR reTriEval and aNalysis of heterogeneouS online content for TerrOrist activity Recognition Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) across Europe face today important challenges in how they identify, gather and interpret terrorist generated content online. The Dark Web presents additional challenges due to its inaccessibility and the fact that undetected material can contribute to the advancement of terrorist violence and radicalisation. LEAs also face the challenge of extracting and summarising meaningful and relevant content hidden in huge amounts of online data to inform their resource deployment and investigations. In this context, the main objective of the TENSOR project is to provide a powerful terrorism intelligence platform offering LEAs fast and reliable planning and prevention functionalities for the early detection of terrorist organised activities, radicalisation and recruitment. The platform integrates a set of…

CONNEXIONs

CONNEXIONs InterCONnected NEXt-Generation Immersive IoT Platform of Crime and Terrorism DetectiON, PredictiON, InvestigatiON, and PreventiON Services CONNEXIONs aims to develop and demonstrate next-generation detection, prediction, prevention, and investigation services. These services will be based on multidimensional integration and correlation of heterogeneous multimodal data, and delivery of pertinent information to various stakeholders in an interactive manner tailored to their needs, through augmented and virtual reality environments. The CONNEXIONs solution encompasses the entire lifecycle of law enforcement operations including: pre-occurrence crime prediction and prevention during-occurrence LEA operations post-occurrence investigation, and crime-scene simulation and 3D reconstruction. CONNEXIONs will meaningfully enhance operational and (near) real-time situational awareness, through automated identification, interpretation, fusion and correlation of multiple heterogeneous big data sources, as well as their delivery via immersive solutions. Such multimodal data include Surface/Deep/Dark Web…

MULTIFORESEE

MULTIFORESEE MULTI-modal Imaging of FOREnsic SciEnce Evidence The main objective of the COST Action CA16101, entitled MULTI-modal Imaging of FOREnsic SciEnce Evidence (MULTI-FORESEE)- tools for Forensic Science, is to promote innovative, multi-informative, operationally deployable and commercially exploitable imaging solutions/technology to analyse forensic evidence. Forensic evidence includes, but not limited to, fingermarks, hair, paint, biofluids, digital evidence, fibers, documents and living individuals. Imaging technologies include optical, mass spectrometric, spectroscopic, chemical, physical and digital forensic techniques complemented by expertise in IT solutions and computational modelling. Imaging technologies enable multiple physical and chemical information to be captured in one analysis, from one specimen, with information being more easily conveyed and understood for a more rapid exploitation. The enhanced value of the evidence gathered will be conducive to much more informed investigations and judicial…

CREST

CREST Fighting Crime and TerroRism with an IoT-enabled Autonomous Platform based on an Ecosystem of Advanced IntelligEnce, Operations, and InveStigation Technologies CREST aims to equip LEAs with an advanced prediction, prevention, operation, and investigation platform by leveraging the IoT ecosystem, autonomous systems, and targeted technologies and building upon the concept of multidimensional integration and correlation of heterogeneous multimodal data streams (ranging from online content to IoT-enabled sensors) for a) threat detection and assessment, b) dynamic mission planning and adaptive navigation for improved surveillance based on autonomous systems, c) distributed command and control of law enforcement missions, d) sharing of information and exchange of digital evidence based on blockchain, and e) delivery of pertinent information to different stakeholders in an interactive manner tailored to their needs. CREST will also provide chain-of-custody,…

INFINITY

INFINITY IMMERSE. INTERACT. INVESTIGATE Infinity’s ambition is to become a flagship project against society’s most pressing cybercriminal, terrorist and hybrid threats. Synthesising the latest innovations in virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning with big data and visual analytics, Infinity will deliver an integrated solution that aims to revolutionise data driven investigations. Bringing together a strong representation from national and supranational agencies with an end user-driven design, it will directly address the core needs of contemporary law enforcement. Specifically, it will equip investigators and analysts with cutting-edge tools to acquire, process, visualise and act upon the enormous quantities of data they are faced with every day. Bolstered by cognitive research, automated systems and instinctive interfaces and controls, Infinity will be designed and developed to maximise the potential of…

VECTOR

VECTOR Virtual Evidence Capture Tool for Ordnance Recovery The identification, classification and risk assessment of explosive devices such as unexploded ordinances (UXOs) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), is of critical importance to NATO and its partners' strategic interests and tactical operations. However, there are considerable challenges in doing so without specialised expertise present on the ground. VECTOR is going to provide an innovative solution that will enable real-time communication and collaboration between first responders and off-site experts via a multimedia capture application and a command and control dashboard. By synthesising cutting-edge 3D photogrammetry, image recognition, data visualization, and augmented / virtual reality technology, VECTOR aims to go beyond the state-of-the-art to enhance explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) operations against a wide range of threats.