Periodic Reporting for period 1 - S4AllCities (Smart Spaces Safety and Security for All Cities)
Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2021-08-31
Public spaces, such as city centers, sports venues, train stations, airports and other transport hubs, are soft targets, prone to low cost attacks that can cause a large number of casualties. Such attacks are not just limited to physical attacks, but also cyber-attacks, and can have significant psychological and economic impact on society. Therefore, we are faced with the challenge of protecting our public spaces from both physical and cyber-attacks.
The overall objectives of S4AllCities are to:
• Complement legacy monitoring systems with the adaptation of state of the art and beyond, low-cost surveillance technologies and solutions that enhance Smart City preparedness and defense capability in both cyber and physical space.
• Design and develop an Open Platform for sharing and managing information, while providing intelligence that provides unprecedented situational awareness and decision support, while enhances European cities resilience, without compromising citizens’ fundamental rights and privacy.
• Design and develop an intelligent communications architecture that ensures the interconnection and integration of the city smart systems, with the systems supporting security practitioners.
• Validate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the integrated S4AllCities SoS in relevant environments by the actual public authorities/end-users in three European Smart Cities accomplishing at the end of the project a TRL-7 level for the entire S4AllCities platform.
• Significantly impact collaboration across all smart cities’ stakeholders, from urban planners to infrastructure operators, private service operators, security practitioners, IT supervisors and providers, while engaging citizens towards more secure and safe cities.
The overall objectives of S4AllCities are to:
• Complement legacy monitoring systems with the adaptation of state of the art and beyond, low-cost surveillance technologies and solutions that enhance Smart City preparedness and defense capability in both cyber and physical space.
• Design and develop an Open Platform for sharing and managing information, while providing intelligence that provides unprecedented situational awareness and decision support, while enhances European cities resilience, without compromising citizens’ fundamental rights and privacy.
• Design and develop an intelligent communications architecture that ensures the interconnection and integration of the city smart systems, with the systems supporting security practitioners.
• Validate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the integrated S4AllCities SoS in relevant environments by the actual public authorities/end-users in three European Smart Cities accomplishing at the end of the project a TRL-7 level for the entire S4AllCities platform.
• Significantly impact collaboration across all smart cities’ stakeholders, from urban planners to infrastructure operators, private service operators, security practitioners, IT supervisors and providers, while engaging citizens towards more secure and safe cities.
The main results achieved during the first reporting period, coinciding with the first year of activities of the project, are summarized below.
The gaps and needs of smart cities with respect to security needs of soft targets and crowded spaces were assessed through a literature review and ad-hoc questionnaires to the end user partners. The user needs helped refine and validate the main functionalities, requirements and use-cases of the S4AllCities solution, as well as to establish Key Performance Indicators and functional and non-functional requirements for the project. The process resulted in 79 User Requirements, 23 Use Cases, 11 KPIs, 233 functional requirements and 27 non-functional requirements. The initial version of the architecture was established, with the final version released in M13.
Cities were asked about the cyber-threats and based on this feedback an analysis of cyber spaces and actors was performed, providing specifications for an ML software module for detection of cyberattacks following a pre-characterized attack profile. The modalities that a malicious actor could carry out attacks were investigated and a visual attack to AI tools was designed. A combined hardware and software approach (pPUF lock) for access control to restricted areas was developed.
The first version of all hardware and software components has been released, as summarized below:
• Novel sensors, including the Fiber Bragg sensing platform, the next generation smart building SB112 system, a low-cost edge oriented and resource constrained image-based processing hardware platform, an airborne sensing platform, a community policing crowd sensing platform, and a portable near infrared spectrometer for sensing chemical precursors to explosives. Further, legacy sensors available in the end-user cities have been identified to integrate their signals in the S4AllCities digital twins.
• The distributed edge computing internet-of-things (DECIoT) platform, aggregating and pre-processing raw data from the sensors into events. Additional services for sensing the network status are implemented, that enable communication of first responders through a mission critical push-to-talk application even in congested networks, and also adapt the data collection and transmission rates appropriately.
• The malicious actions intelligent detection system (MAIDS), combining advanced simulation models for predicting how events will evolve, with situational awareness through video analytics (e.g. detection of actions, non-verbal communications of authorized personnel, movements of crowds), all fed to a fusion engine combining the events with native knowledge for differentiating usual from unusual behavior.
• The augmented context management system (ACMS), responsible for generating alerts and early warnings from the events, evaluating in real time the risk status of infrastructure and public spaces, and generating recommended actions for first responders. All events, alerts, simulations and data are presented in a Common Operational Picture, allowing security operators to visualize all information.
The plan for integration of all the components was also established, along with preliminary work on definition of the scenarios for the demonstration and pilot activities.
In addition to the technical actions, S4AllCities has recruited its extended Project Advisory Group, developed the methodology to be followed for the security management framework, performed the initial steps of the societal impact assessment
The gaps and needs of smart cities with respect to security needs of soft targets and crowded spaces were assessed through a literature review and ad-hoc questionnaires to the end user partners. The user needs helped refine and validate the main functionalities, requirements and use-cases of the S4AllCities solution, as well as to establish Key Performance Indicators and functional and non-functional requirements for the project. The process resulted in 79 User Requirements, 23 Use Cases, 11 KPIs, 233 functional requirements and 27 non-functional requirements. The initial version of the architecture was established, with the final version released in M13.
Cities were asked about the cyber-threats and based on this feedback an analysis of cyber spaces and actors was performed, providing specifications for an ML software module for detection of cyberattacks following a pre-characterized attack profile. The modalities that a malicious actor could carry out attacks were investigated and a visual attack to AI tools was designed. A combined hardware and software approach (pPUF lock) for access control to restricted areas was developed.
The first version of all hardware and software components has been released, as summarized below:
• Novel sensors, including the Fiber Bragg sensing platform, the next generation smart building SB112 system, a low-cost edge oriented and resource constrained image-based processing hardware platform, an airborne sensing platform, a community policing crowd sensing platform, and a portable near infrared spectrometer for sensing chemical precursors to explosives. Further, legacy sensors available in the end-user cities have been identified to integrate their signals in the S4AllCities digital twins.
• The distributed edge computing internet-of-things (DECIoT) platform, aggregating and pre-processing raw data from the sensors into events. Additional services for sensing the network status are implemented, that enable communication of first responders through a mission critical push-to-talk application even in congested networks, and also adapt the data collection and transmission rates appropriately.
• The malicious actions intelligent detection system (MAIDS), combining advanced simulation models for predicting how events will evolve, with situational awareness through video analytics (e.g. detection of actions, non-verbal communications of authorized personnel, movements of crowds), all fed to a fusion engine combining the events with native knowledge for differentiating usual from unusual behavior.
• The augmented context management system (ACMS), responsible for generating alerts and early warnings from the events, evaluating in real time the risk status of infrastructure and public spaces, and generating recommended actions for first responders. All events, alerts, simulations and data are presented in a Common Operational Picture, allowing security operators to visualize all information.
The plan for integration of all the components was also established, along with preliminary work on definition of the scenarios for the demonstration and pilot activities.
In addition to the technical actions, S4AllCities has recruited its extended Project Advisory Group, developed the methodology to be followed for the security management framework, performed the initial steps of the societal impact assessment
S4AallCities aims to contribute towards the protection of smart cities “soft targets” and crowded places through the adoption of technical solutions that support the security of public spaces without compromising their open nature. Through the continuous engagement with stakeholders for the design and validation of tools and processes it will create physical and cybersecurity solutions that are complete, harmonized and most importantly accepted by the citizens.
The main innovations are:
· Classification and counting of objects
· Cyber Incidents Detection Module
· Fire Dynamics Modelling Simulations to model fire and smoke propagation for the Critical Infrastructures (
· Threat level assessment to evaluate threat level of soft-targets spaces based on their susceptibility to IED terrorist threats
· Modelling of mass shooting attacks in public areas to maximize the survival probability and minimize the shooter effectiveness.
· Selection of routes for intervention or evacuation purposes.
· Digital mock-up of the city which fuses and displays in an easy-to-understand way of large size of information
· Face Recognition and authentication & Gesture-based interaction platform
· Two-factor authentication lock based on photonic PUF technology for increasing the security of physical access to restricted areas
· Homomorphic encryption to preserve the possibility of machine learning re-identification of faces
· Non-intrusive portable and low cost NIR spectroscopic system for chemical sensing (explosive precursors)
· Community-Policing crowd sensing platform
· Next Generation 112 call- enabled smart sensing
· High level Fusion: Machine Reasoning with Advanced situational awareness
· 12+ Sensors (per demonstrator city) and legacy systems will be connected with APIs with the Digital Twins in a uniform manner for cyber security management (Access Control, Anonymization, cyber defense, data fusion, data pre-processing, data harmonization etc)
Additionally, a handbook of operational practical solutions will be created and S4AllCities will provide a policy recommendation toolbox for public authorities focusing on the cyber and physical security of the cities.
The main innovations are:
· Classification and counting of objects
· Cyber Incidents Detection Module
· Fire Dynamics Modelling Simulations to model fire and smoke propagation for the Critical Infrastructures (
· Threat level assessment to evaluate threat level of soft-targets spaces based on their susceptibility to IED terrorist threats
· Modelling of mass shooting attacks in public areas to maximize the survival probability and minimize the shooter effectiveness.
· Selection of routes for intervention or evacuation purposes.
· Digital mock-up of the city which fuses and displays in an easy-to-understand way of large size of information
· Face Recognition and authentication & Gesture-based interaction platform
· Two-factor authentication lock based on photonic PUF technology for increasing the security of physical access to restricted areas
· Homomorphic encryption to preserve the possibility of machine learning re-identification of faces
· Non-intrusive portable and low cost NIR spectroscopic system for chemical sensing (explosive precursors)
· Community-Policing crowd sensing platform
· Next Generation 112 call- enabled smart sensing
· High level Fusion: Machine Reasoning with Advanced situational awareness
· 12+ Sensors (per demonstrator city) and legacy systems will be connected with APIs with the Digital Twins in a uniform manner for cyber security management (Access Control, Anonymization, cyber defense, data fusion, data pre-processing, data harmonization etc)
Additionally, a handbook of operational practical solutions will be created and S4AllCities will provide a policy recommendation toolbox for public authorities focusing on the cyber and physical security of the cities.