Periodic Reporting for period 3 - OPTICS2 (Observation Platform for Technological and Institutional Consolidation of research in Safety and Security) Reporting period: 2020-10-01 to 2021-09-30 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project OPTICS2 aims at providing a comprehensive evaluation of relevant Safety and Security R&I in aviation and air transport. The main objective of the project is assessing if Europe is performing the right safety and security research and if the research is delivering the expected benefits to society. OPTICS2 works in close collaboration with the European Commission and use the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), the roadmap towards the vision, as a basis for our assessment activities. OPTICS2 aims to make research more effective and efficient, by identifying future needs, gaps and barriers, and by providing recommendations for further actions. OPTICS offers to ACARE and to other key aviation stakeholders a wider perspective on the recent and on-going research in Europe and to show where are the main gaps and bottlenecks towards the achievement of FlightPath 2050 Safety and Security goals. This objective was tackled through four main type of activity: (1) Review the state-of-the-art of safety and security research, assessing every year the progress against the goals set out by Flightpath 2050 and ACARE SRIA; (2) Carry out an international benchmarking, comparing the state-of-the-art in safety and security research and the societal impact of that research in Europe with non-EU nations; (3) Identify research gaps and bottlenecks for innovation and developing recommendations to address them; (4) Engage with key stakeholders. OPTICS2 considered the Safety and Security Goals of FlightPath 2050 through the clusters of R&I activities and research projects, using a bottom-up and top-down approach. The bottom-up approach (i.e. identification, selection and assessment of R&I projects) focused on how projects and programmes covered the ACARE SRIA Capabilities and, hence, the Enablers and clusters of FlightPath 2050 goals. This approach allowed the identification of research strengths, gaps, bottlenecks and constraints affecting research progress. The bottom-up approach (i.e. matter experts’ contributions on specific aviation safety and/or security R&I fields) was complemented by three workshops (on “Aviation Cybersecurity”, “Data-science” and "Urban Air Mobility"), one TRA invited session and one roundtable consultation on human factos in aviation with aviation experts and stakeholders intended to identify the research priorities and the impact on stakeholders’ activities. The results from bottom-up and top-down processes were reviewed and compiled to provide strategic recommendations to the EC and/or ACARE via an annual ‘State-of-the-Art’ report. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far Work Package 1 refined the assessment methodology for the state-of-the-art review of safety and security, taking into account the OPTICS lessons learnt and the required adaption to assess security research projects. WP1 defined the methodology used for the integration of the bottom-up and top-down findings. It designed and implemented the Internal Security & Safety OPTICS2 Research Dataset. The refinement of the dataset allowed to collect, organise and assess all the data relative to the project assessed. Based on this work, WP1 produced the yearly release of the Internal Security & Safety OPTICS2 Research Dataset, by aggregating input from Safety and Security Assessments.Work Package 2 provided on an annual basis a review of the state of the art of safety research and innovation. The state of the art is defined as the current progress towards Flightpath 2050 and intermediate goals. The review considered the specific contribution of EU and national funded research projects. WP2 benchmarked the state of the art of safety research and innovation in Europe against international safety research and innovation. It identified gaps in the current research landscape that could become bottlenecks to innovation and industry uptake and, thus, it formulated specific recommendations accordingly for each Action Area.Similarly, Work Package 3 provided review of the state-of-the-art of security research, it assessed the contribution of EU and national funded projects towards achieving ACARE goals and other relevant security goals, it benchmarked technological gaps and bottlenecks to innovation and, based on the findings, it formulated specific strategic recommendations for the five security areas considered.The State-of-the-art review carried out in Y4 included also international benchmarking for both safety and security proojects, as well as considerations on additional metrics: metric 5 (Investment in research) and metric 6 (Research contribution to competitiveness, standards and regulations).In the four years of the project, OPTICS2 covered and assessed about 402 different projects for Safety and 198 projects for Security for a total of 600 projects. Work Package 4 listed, contacted and engaged the relevant stakeholders. WP4 defined the scope, objectives and means for Stakeholders’ engagement, in coordination with WP2 and WP3 in order to gain more in-depth understanding of specific issues and to collect their assessment of research benefits and impact. The best format and technique to engage with stakeholders were identified in workshops, roundtable consultations, ad-hoc meetings that were organised and performed to collect and refine findings. Three Workshops were conducted to develop recommendations considering: the input from the review, the assessment of EU research strategy, the international benchmarking, and outcomes of the stakeholders’ engagement. OPTICS2 participated to the activity of ACARE Working Group 4. In addition, a TRA invited sessions and a first “Roundtable Consultation” were organised around particular type of bottleneck / gap identified for research security on Human and Organisational topics. Work Package 5 worked to raise the awareness on the project activities to all the relevant aviation stakeholders, and supported WP4 activities. WP5 promoted the exploitation of the project results to further guide safety (and relevant security) research policies and research activities in the industrial and scientific domains. Among the producst, we must mention the website and the “OPTICS2 interactive narratives” as well as by participantion to dissemination Events & Networking like the AeroDays 2019 that contributed to the aviation community with the OPTICS2 results in keep improving and maintaining the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda and its continued applicability in achieving Flightpath 2050 goals. 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) The expected results and actual outputs of OPTICS2 were:• OPTICS2 Open Repository that is available in a easy-to-use format through the Interactive Narratives on OPTICS2 website and that contains EU research projects on aviation safety and security (FP7, H2020, SESAR, CleanSky, Future Sky Safety and National projects).• State-of-the-art assessment and review of the msot relevant research projects in the field of aviation safety and security.• Analysis of research progress against Flightpath 2050 and on ACARE Strategic Research Agenda Goals, Enablers and Capabilities.• Aviation safety and security research international benchmarking.• Final safety and security integrated recommendations including six top safety and security research priorities each and eight cross-cutting research priorities. • Dissemination activities and technical handouts to summarise OPTICS2 findings and extend the outreach of its activities. 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