The ENCIRCLE project has developed a structured and comprehensive approach to facilitate the development of an EU CBRN competitive and sustainable industrial sector in the global market, capable of improving EU resilience to CBRN new threats and attacks.
This approach has resulted in five main objectives and results:
1. Create an open and neutral EU CBRN cluster.
• The communities have been enlarged and now has 141 registered organisation in the Technological community and 94 practitioner organisations. 279 tools are in the ENCIRCLE sustainable and secure dynamic catalogue and 39 finished and running projects are listed in the catalogue.
2. Provide a sustainable and flexible vision and roadmap for the development of the European CBRN market and innovations.
• The ENCIRCLE Needs and gaps analysis and workshops have concentrated on short term requirements to match the 2017, 2019 and 2020 topic calls. The final list of needs and gaps, taking into account all the updates over the whole project duration, has been generated at the end of the project. The innovation roadmaps for CBRN Cluster Part B projects has been created.
3. Provide integration with platforms (systems, tools, services, products) by proposing standardized interfaces and future EU standards to integrate CBRN technologies and innovations developed from the Part b projects of the H2020-SEC-05-DRS CBRN Cluster call
• Standards and Interfaces have been collected and assessed and the project has actively collaborated with Stair4Securtiy in the Standards arena A Human Factors questionnaire has been developed and disseminated among different EU projects and human factors reports have been generated and are available in the ENCIRCLE Catalogue. A Facility in the ENCIRCLE dynamic catalogue has been implemented to highlight integration platforms.
4. Support CBRN safety, security and defence commercial and market services.
• A number of surveys were conducted on financial instruments and these are available on the ENCIRCLE project site. A business maturity model was developed and implemented with all of the Part B DRS04 Projects so that the projects can be baselined and gaps understood for future support. Funding schemes at national and EU have been identified and highlighted as resources. In addition two market analysis reports have been be issued and are available in the ENCIRCLE Catalogue Networks and Forum in the resources folder.
5. Improve and facilitate European CBRN dissemination and exploitation.
• The EDEN platform information has been incorporated in the ENCIRCLE platform. The cluster has reported publicly all results whilst respecting IPR and confidentiality. Business developments have been assessed although no business deals to date can be reported. All the project resources will be publicly available on CORDIS when the project ends. ENCIRCLE has supported and conducted many dissemination activities during the course of the project as described in the previous sections at conferences and exhibitions and the COU and SRE events have been supported. Relevant results and innovations have been communicated directly or indirectly via the COU with DG ECHO and the Centres of Excellence. An exploitation and sustainability plan for the cluster has been proposed and is under review which paves the way for the future of the cluster.
Overall conclusions: The project has successfully met its objectives and has put in place a framework, tools, resources and community to support and improve CBRN business innovation.