Call: Next generation of information systems to support EU external policies

1. Excellent Science
2. Industrial Leadership
3. Societal Challenges

The primary aims of the Secure Societies Challenge are:

• to enhance the resilience of our society against natural and man-made disasters, ranging from the development of new crisis management tools to communication interoperability, and to develop novel solutions for the protection of critical infrastructure;
• to fight crime and terrorism ranging from new forensic tools to protection against explosives;
• to improve border security, ranging from improved maritime border protection to supply chain security and to support the Union's external security policies including through conflict prevention and peace building;
• and to provide enhanced cyber-security, ranging from secure information sharing to new assurance models.

Securing the society against disasters is one of the central elements of the functioning of any society. There is barely any societal sector which is not to some extent concerned by disasters and related resilience and security issues. Fighting crime and terrorism requires new technologies and capabilities for fighting and preventing crime (including cyber-crime), illegal trafficking and terrorism (including cyber-terrorism), including understanding and tackling terrorist ideas and beliefs to also avoid aviation-related threats. The protection of the European borders requires the development of systems, equipment, tools, processes, and methods for rapid identification. This includes supply chain security in the context of the EU’s customs policy.

On Digital Security, this Challenge focuses on increasing the security of current applications, services and infrastructures by integrating state-of-the-art security solutions or processes, supporting the creation of lead markets & market incentives in Europe, following an end-user driven approach, including for instance law enforcement agencies, first responders, operators of critical infrastructures, ICT service providers, ICT manufacturers, market operators and citizens.

This Challenge should bring together all security stakeholders: industry - including SMEs, research organisations, universities, as well as public authorities, non-governmental organisations and public and private organisations in the security domain. The active involvement of end-users is of high importance.

The Secure Societies Challenge will contribute to the implementation of the policy goals of the Europe 2020 strategy, the Security Industrial Policy, the Internal Security Strategy and the Cyber Security Strategy.

The objective of this call is to reduce the loss of human life, environmental, economic and material damage from natural and man-made disasters, including from extreme weather events, crime and terrorism threats.

Under this call proposals are invited against the following topics:

• Integrated tools for response planning and scenario building
• Situational awareness systems to support civil protection preparation and operational decision making
• Validation of biological toxins measurements after an incident: Development of tools and procedures for quality control
• Broadband communication systems
• Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN)
• Developing a comprehensive approach to violent radicalization in the EU from early understanding to improving protection
• Human Factor for the Prevention, Investigation, and Mitigation of criminal and terrorist acts
• Forensics techniques on: a) trace qualification, and b) broadened use of DNA
• Toolkits integrating tools and techniques for forensic laboratories
• Integration of detection capabilities and data fusion with utility providers’ networks
• Detection techniques on explosives: Countering an explosive threat, across the timeline of a plot
• Technologies for prevention, investigation, and mitigation in the context of fight against crime and terrorism
• Next generation of information systems to support EU external policies
• Towards reducing the cost of technologies in land border security applications
• Risk-based screening at border crossing
• Through-foliage detection, including in the outermost regions of the EU
• Architectures and organizations, big data and data analytics for customs risk management of the international goods supply chain trade movements
• Acceptance of "no gate crossing point solutions"
• Data fusion for maritime security applications
• Border Security: autonomous systems and control systems
• Pan European Networks of practitioners and other actors in the field of security

The broad range and the complexity of Common Security and Defence Policy civilians' missions make the management of information and of resources critical to decision-making, planning, optimizing for pre-deployment, and deploying capabilities within such missions, and essential to increase the efficiency, visibility and impact of the missions. The processes, procedures, information systems, and equipment currently committed to such missions by the Member States need to be brought together and coordinated to constitute a common interoperable platform to enhance the EU capacity to play its role.

The procurers in the buyers group must be responsible for the acquisition and/or regulatory strategy for the targeted innovative solutions and aim to obtain ambitious quality and efficiency improvements in the area of public interest addressed by the PCP, or be entities with a mandate from one or more of such procurers to act on their behalf in the procurement (e.g. central purchasing bodies). Other entities (e.g. end-users, certification bodies, private/NGO procurers that provide services of public interest and share the same procurement need) whose participation is well justified may participate in additional activities that clearly add value to the action and support the preparation and execution of the PCP or embed the PCP into a wider set of demand side activities. ‘Sole participants’ must indicate which of its 'members' are the procurers contributing to the budget of the proposed joint procurement that satisfy the participation requirements and which are the respective procurement budgets of each of these members that are at the disposal for carrying out the procurement. A sole participant acting as buyers group must have a mandate based on a well-defined procurement need and budget from its procurers to act on their behalf. 

The buyers group must contain minimum two legal entities which are public procurers that are established in two different Member States or associated countries. Both legal entities must be independent of each other.

Indicative budget: The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of 10 million € would allow for this topic to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

The requested reimbursement of the estimated eligible costs of coordination and networking activities should not exceed 30% of the requested grant. Indirect eligible costs are calculated as a flat rate of 25% of direct eligible costs, excluding direct eligible costs for subcontracting (e.g the price of the PCP procurement) and costs of resources made available by third parties which are not used on the premises of the beneficiary (e.g test equipment). 

Link to the National Contact Point Finder.