Law Enforcement agencies human factor methods and Toolkit for the Security and protection of CROWDs in mass gatherings

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LETS-CROWD (Law Enforcement agencies human factor methods and Toolkit for the Security and protection of CROWDs in mass gatherings)

Periodo di rendicontazione: 2018-05-01 al 2019-10-31

LETSCROWD overcome challenges preventing the effective implementation of the European Security Model with regards to mass gatherings. This has been achieved by providing a set of outcomes to security policy practitioners and in particular, Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). The overall project objective is to create guidelines for the implementation of the European Security Model for the protection of crowds during mass gatherings based on human factors accompanied by a set of supporting toolkits. The specific objectives are the following:

O1. Develop a common European understanding about security issues for crowd protection during mass gatherings.
O2. Develop a Policy-making platform for security policy-makers to facilitate decision making processes and achieve efficient and effective policies for prevention, investigation and mitigation of criminal and terrorist acts in mass gatherings.
O3. Develop human-centred Toolkit for LEAs composed by innovative crowd behaviour models and crowd assessment tool, procedures and communication strategies, semantic intelligence tools and human-centred computer vision and video analysis.
O4. Perform practical demonstrations to assess project outcomes involving piloting actions related to policy making decisions, cooperation between LEAs (training, prevention, preparedness and response exercises and drills), population awareness campaigns, data collection of public opinion and citizens acceptance, etc
O5. Analyse public opinion or mood on mass scale in relation to policies and actions for protecting people in mass gatherings against criminal and terrorist acts. This will complement the Eurobarometer and help policy makers, LEAs and other interested parties to make informed evaluations and assess the impact of events or actions on public perception.
O6. Dissemination, communication of results and post project deployment and large scale adoption.

LETSCROWD tools developed during the project were integrated into a unique platform called LETSCROWD Server (LS). The LETSCROWD Server is a tool designed to help LEAS to control all kinds of events in all their phases: preparation, execution and post-event. It a) provides quantified risk analysis and promotes security with regard to mass gatherings; b) improves policy makers’ planning and situational awareness, helping them to understand and combat potential threats in crowd events.

The overall LETSCROWD objective was to create guidelines for the implementation of the European Security Model in the protection of crowds during mass gatherings based on the human factors accompanied by set supporting toolkits. This involved new methods, policies, designs, tools and the piloting actions. The specific objectives are the following:
O1: This Objective was achieved by developing an extension of the European Security Model implementation guidelines in the form of a tailored Dynamic Risk Assessment (DRA) methodology. The novelty and innovation of the DRA methodology are represented by the smart correlation and clustering of weak signals to detect precursors of threats to the crowd in the dynamic risk assessment exercise carried out by LEAs.
O2: The Polic Making Toolkit (PMT) allows policy makers to define security strategies for a given event, it also shows relevant existing policies that must be taken into consideration by decision makers. The policy making toolkit was considered as an internal module of the application that is based on the policy calculation and the LETSCROWD Server as the main server that contains PMT and other modules develop within the project.
O3: The Crowd Modelling and Planning tool (CMP) has features that relate to computer vision, providing simulated training data, integration with the LETSCROWD Server to display crowd simulation results and a feature to assess communication around a mass gathering location. The final version of the Innovative Communication Procedures (ICP) – aim at improving crowd awareness and intercultural competences in the pre-event and the execution phases of an event. For the human-centred computer vision (HCV), three functionalities have been implemented: appearance-based person re-identification, attribute-based people search, and crowd density estimation. In addition, a final version of the Text Analytics Engine has been released. The Text Analytics Engine follows a dual approach based on the monitoring and inspection of mass gathering information on the Web.
O4: To achieve Objective 4 several Practical Demonstrations (PDs) have been conducted as a proof-of-concept of the LETSCROWD outcomes (methodologies, guidelines, technical outputs and scientific concepts). Demonstration planning and evaluation strategy is the first but also a reference point, a kind of roadmap, for the implementation and execution of demonstrators, and for social impact assessments and outcomes evaluation. For the “Demonstration planning and evaluation strategy”, three key elements were analysed: 1) LETSCROWD outcomes, 2) scenarios and 3) Use Cases.
O5: As requested in Objective 5, different methods were applied to assess the public security perception on mass gatherings such as: online surveys, interviews, focus groups, emotion and crime analysis of the web. A total of 234 responses were collected, considering surveys, interviews and focus groups.
O6: During its lifetime the LETSCROWD consortium produced and updated a detailed dissemination plans and reports releasing several deliverables with this purpose. For the exploitation plan, the consortium was focused on the identification of LETSCROWD outcomes and the strategies for the different individual exploitation plans.

The main aim of LETS-CROWD was to develop a holistic approach that involves a collection of dedicated policy models, toolkits and demonstration actions that pool their resources and capabilities together to create a new system which offers more functionality and performance. LETS-CROWD is intended for Europe’s security policy decision makers, LEA’s, societal groups and other stakeholders who deal with crowd protection against criminal and terrorist acts in mass gatherings through all event phases.

IMPACT
SOCIAL IMPACT
A combined methodological approach was used to assess the public perception. The findings collected during this data collection activity, can be used as starting point to further investigate the topic related to the security perception and the impact of new technologies on personal rights and freedoms. Both LEAs and citizens consider that people fundamental rights have been restricted, at least to some extent, for the fight against terrorism. Even if the new technologies are considered important for enhancing the security of citizens; the real challenge in the upcoming years will be “to find a good balance between security and personal freedoms”.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
The business models have been presented based on the value network analysis, and a canvas model provided for each of the tools. The project approach to Cost-Benefit Analysis is based on the methodology endorsed by the EU. The analysis has been restricted to the use that the leaders of the technology partners foresee as the most promising business strategies and constitutes a basic pillar for future work. LETSCROWD will start transferring solutions to the market within a coherent process starting immediately after the end of the project, targeting profits in less than 5 years after the end of the project.

LETSCROWD and the LEAs’ phases during mass gatherings

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LETS-CROWD (Law Enforcement agencies human factor methods and Toolkit for the Security and protection of CROWDs in mass gatherings)

Condividi questa pagina

Scarica