Travelling Intelligence Against Crime and Terrorism

Project Information

TENACITy

Grant agreement ID: 101074048

DOI

10.3030/101074048

Project closed

EC signature date 19 July 2022

Start date 1 September 2022

End date 31 August 2025

Funded under

• Civil Security for Society

Total cost

€ 5 324 436,25

EU contribution

€ 4 439 136,25

Coordinated by

EUROPEAN DYNAMICS LUXEMBOURG SA
Luxembourg

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TENACITy (Travelling Intelligence Against Crime and Terrorism)

Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

LEAs use the data in their information systems as their basis for making decisions that affect the safety of European citizens. According to a recent report of the European Court of Auditors on the EU Information Systems use, it has been found out that individual countries have different perception and methodologies on how data management should be addressed; officers from LEAs have stated that not all datasets are included in their systems, while other data is either not complete and accurate or not entered in a timely manner. The same report states that there are regulatory and “cultural” issues, according to which some countries do not make all the functions offered in the central EU systems available through their national systems. TENACITy envisions to address these challenges by proposing a 3-pillar approach: (a) Modern and effective tools for exploitation of travel intelligence data by security authorities: TENACITy proposes an interoperable open architecture for the integration and analysis of multiple transactional, historical and behavioural data from a variety of sources, by exploiting game changing digital technologies; (b) Training and sensitisation of LEAs’ personnel: TENACITy envisions the design of a “living lab” to be established to organise hackathons, workshops for all relevant stakeholders who would benefit from the use of passenger data and digital technologies proposed; (c) Holistic approach to crime prevention: TENACITy vision is to implement and demonstrate a Travel Intelligence Governance Framework that will incorporate a holistic approach to crime prevention, will ensure that the proposed digital technologies will support the identification of the modus operandi of criminal and terrorism organizations and will include policy makers in the governance process, examining how the new tools will provide new capabilities to shape the regulations.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The TENACITy project successfully delivered an integrated and interoperable Travel Intelligence Governance Framework supported by an advanced technological platform that enables secure, lawful, and ethical information exchange among Passenger Information Units (PIUs) and Law Enforcement Authorities (LEAs) across Europe.

The Consortium established effective coordination and quality assurance mechanisms, ensuring smooth project execution and timely delivery of results. Extensive engagement with end users and stakeholders allowed the project to capture real operational needs, data-handling practices, and privacy expectations, forming the foundation of a robust governance and risk management framework fully aligned with EU legal and ethical standards.

A suite of digital tools was designed, developed, and validated to enhance data analysis, risk assessment, and pattern identification using privacy-preserving technologies. These tools, covering risk management, open-source intelligence, blockchain-based data validation, and criminal network analysis, were fully integrated into a secure, containerised platform with single sign-on functionality and full interoperability. The system was successfully tested through Living Labs, pilot demonstrations in Cyprus and Brussels, and a large-scale virtual exercise, confirming its usability and operational value in realistic cross-border scenarios.

A comprehensive training programme and e-learning platform were developed to strengthen end-user capacities, while targeted communication, dissemination, and exploitation actions ensured broad visibility and sustainability of project results. Ethical compliance and human rights considerations remained central throughout all activities, guided by continuous oversight from the Ethics Advisory Board.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

TENACITy has advanced beyond the state of the art in several fronts:

Travel Intelligence Governance Framework: TENACITy offers a response to the incompatibility of intelligence and respect for human rights, by blending together the different dimensions and perspectives (i.e. technological advances, legal and ethics constraints, societal concerns) into a reinvigorated oversight that will safeguard and protect human rights without hindering agencies' ability to maintain public safety. This has been achieved with the development of a mechanism for improved prevention, investigation, and mitigation of impacts of crime, including of new/emerging criminal modi-operandi. This mechanism will invite decision-makers and stakeholders to become -in a systematic and comprehensive way- integral part of the governance process aimed at understanding the interplay of expectations and requirements of policy-makers, LEAs and passengers.

Development of an Interoperable open Architecture and Digital Tools on the use of Travel Intelligence: TENACITy has gone beyond the state of the art by applying web intelligence to determine relevant behavioural indicators. Doing so helps to detect outliers or anomalies, discover previously unknown trends, associations and rules, and continually monitor data streams as a preventive measure. TENACITy enables LEAs to search, acquire and structure online data related to the subject under investigation. In light of this, investigators will be able to retrieve not only the requested PNR data, but also to perform background checks of this individual, the results of which can be validated versus their PNR, with respect to the current legal framework (DIRECTIVE 2016/681) as well as the privacy and ethics restrictions (e.g. GDPR). This has been achieved by having always a human-in-the-loop in the OSINT process, applying pseudonymisation techniques for private/sensitive information and using transient data whenever applicable. TENACITy has also built models able to accurately predict dynamic, individual behavior something that machine learning methods due to their statistical nature fail to do. Moreover, this combination renders the proposed approach robust to adversarial environments, another weakness for most AI approaches that the combined approach of TENACITy aspires to eradicate.