In recent decades, Europe has experienced several terrorist attacks, proving this threat remains real and serious. Meanwhile, perpetrators are finding new ways to circumvent current security measures. Although such attacks have been relatively rare, EU citizens may still suddenly find themselves caught up in a terrorist incident while at a stadium, shopping in a mall, commuting, or in any other public space. Furthermore, terrorist attacks are associated with lower levels of life satisfaction and happiness among the population. Indeed, one in five people in the EU are worried about a terrorist attack in the next 12 months. Terrorist attacks also reduce citizens’ trust in their fellow citizens and in political, legal and police institutions.
SAFE-CITIES promotes excellence in protecting public spaces by delivering and demonstrating a security and vulnerability assessment framework, supported by a decision-making platform to help implement it, in 4 use cases across 5 EU countries. This allows complex scenarios, crowd behaviour and attacks to be simulated in a realistic virtual environment. This enables end users to perform comprehensive and dynamic risk and vulnerability assessments of the site, identify potential vulnerabilities against threats, and support the full engagement and cooperation of public and private actors - including citizens - in the development of strategies to secure public spaces while preserving their open nature.
The consortium comprises 17 partners from 9 countries (Italy, Cyprus, Netherlands, Greece, Poland, UK, Belgium, Finland and Slovenia), including local authorities, police forces, first responders, RTOs, academia, CSOs, security industry cluster associations, and high-tech SMEs specialising in security.
