he TAKEDOWN Project aims to improve the European response to both forms of criminality in terms of designing effective preventative and responsive strategies and public policies, identifying best practices and most efficient tools for preventing and countering them, disseminating this knowledge among the different stakeholders involved and enhancing their cooperation and mutual cross-fertilization, ultimately offering the victims and the European general public means to get aware of these threats and risks as well as the tools and instruments at their disposal to defend themselves therefrom. OC/TN have become two matters of great concern for European governments and societies affecting social cohesion at both European Union (EU) and member state (MS) levels and calling for a response as effective as well grounded in European social and political values. This is a key notion because the profound impact of OC and TN needs to be measured not only by the economic and social harm they inflict upon European societies and economies but also by the costs that countering OC/TN has on those very same societies and economies in terms of political legitimacy, social cohesion and public expenditure. The review of strategies, policies, practices and measures put in place for countering OC/TN has shown that full compliance with fundamental rights is critical to assure this legitimacy and consequently guaranteeing ongoing public support.
The main objectives of the project are the following:
(1) ANALYSE the body of scientific knowledge, outcomes from EU-projects as well as further data and indicators that address organized crime and terrorist networks, connected with an interdisciplinary review of existing models regarding their explanatory power and their usability.
(2) UNDERSTAND the social, psychological and economic aspects of processes that lead to OC/TN and their impact on social cohesion by doing empirical research on first-line practitioners, policy makers and researchers, combined with interviews, focus groups and workshops with law enforcement agencies and other affected groups.
(3) DEVELOP dynamic, multi-dimensional models for both organized crime and terrorist networks that reflect the complexity of individual and structural dimensions, geographical scale as well as the forms and levels of responses related to different stakeholder groups and practitioners.
(4) CREATE a set of validated, research-based and multilingual TAKEDOWN Toolkits including action plans, response strategies, technological concepts, and best practices, with focus on specific needs of first-line-practitioners as well as professionals in law enforcement, and create policy recommendations and policy briefs for policy makers.
(5) BUILD a web based TAKEDOWN Open Information Hub with knowledge and public service modules, helpline navigators, toolkits and materials for practitioners, and a centralised, intelligent reporting tool on digital cases of OC/TN with modern crowd-tagging functionalities.
(6) DEVELOP a modular TAKEDOWN Solutions Platform build as a flexible PaaS hosting digital security solutions for professionals with a centralised Security Solution Dashboard that is aggregating solution activity streams and includes digital reporting tool alert visualisations.
(7) LEVERAGE the collaboration between the research community, public agencies, practitioners and industry (especially SMEs) providing a digital TAKEDOWN Professional Advisor to support the selection of the right solutions providers, experts and approaches to tackle OC/TN challenges.