[{"command":"openDialog","selector":"#drupal-modal","settings":null,"data":"\u003Cdiv id=\u0022republish_modal_form\u0022\u003E\u003Cform class=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form ecl-form\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 action=\u0022\/en\/article\/modal\/6351\u0022 method=\u0022post\u0022 id=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 accept-charset=\u0022UTF-8\u0022\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHorizon articles can be republished for free under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EYou must give appropriate credit. We ask you to do this by:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 1) Using the original journalist\u0027s byline\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 2) Linking back to our original story\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 3) Using the following text in the footer: This article was originally published in \u003Ca href=\u0027#\u0027\u003EHorizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003ESee our full republication guidelines \u003Ca href=\u0027\/horizon-magazine\/republish-our-stories\u0027\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EHTML for this article, including the attribution and page view counter, is below:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\u0022js-form-item form-item js-form-type-textarea form-item-body-content js-form-item-body-content ecl-form-group ecl-form-group--text-area form-no-label ecl-u-mv-m\u0022\u003E\n \n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n \u003Ctextarea data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 aria-describedby=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 id=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 name=\u0022body_content\u0022 rows=\u00225\u0022 cols=\u002260\u0022 class=\u0022form-textarea ecl-text-area\u0022\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EHow a smartphone could find your stolen bike\u003C\/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EModern smartphones have enough processing power to render augmented reality, where standard images are overlaid with data and annotations, while Bluetooth enables close-range radio communication between devices.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThese capacities are being linked together to make city dwellers safer by an EU-funded research project called City.Risks which has developed an app that networks all the smartphones in an area through an operations centre.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018If you report a bike theft, the operations centre knows more or less your location,\u2019 explained project coordinator Socrates Costicoglou, research director at Space Hellas, a Greek technology firm based in Athens, which is developing an anti-theft device that can be attached to a bike and is discoverable by mobile phones using Bluetooth.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018It sends an activation signal to a selected number of mobile devices that have the City.Risks application in order to start scanning for the stolen bike or item.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe system is linked up to crime data so a tourist can download the app and then be warned if they are about to venture into a high-crime part of the city, using augmented reality.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018By just pointing the camera of a mobile phone to different parts of the horizon, they can display crime-related information about the area,\u2019 said Costicoglou. \u2018They can also receive in the mobile app information alerts from city authorities for something that has happened in the area.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt the moment the researchers are working on prototypes of the sensors and the app. The hope is that some of the project participants will start to make commercial versions a couple of years after the end of the project in 2018.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Italian city of Rome is a partner in the project and the researchers are planning to conduct pilot trials in the last six months of the project in Rome, London, UK, and Sofia in Bulgaria.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESharing\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEven though cities across Europe are getting involved in projects like this to find common ways to tackle crime, a separate group of researchers found that, when it comes to fighting street crime, often there is very little knowledge-sharing between European cities.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018There is lots of knowledge about what causes crime, what the underlying tendencies are, the patterns are, but information is rarely used to a good degree in day-to-day urban intervention design,\u2019 said Martijn Neef, from TNO in the Netherlands. \u2018People are reinventing the wheel on, and on, and on again.\u2019\u003Cblockquote class=\u0022tw-text-center tw-text-blue tw-font-bold tw-text-2xl lg:tw-w-1\/2 tw-border-2 tw-border-blue tw-p-12 tw-my-8 lg:tw-m-12 lg:tw--ml-16 tw-float-left\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cspan class=\u0022tw-text-5xl tw-rotate-180\u0022\u003E\u201c\u003C\/span\u003E\n \u003Cp class=\u0022tw-font-serif tw-italic\u0022\u003E\u2018We need to start small.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cfooter\u003E\n \u003Ccite class=\u0022tw-not-italic tw-font-normal tw-text-sm tw-text-black\u0022\u003EMartijn Neef, TNO, the Netherlands\u003C\/cite\u003E\n \u003C\/footer\u003E\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe was the scientific coordinator of the EU-funded BESECURE project, which tried to tackle this issue by working on a way for city authorities to share the best methods of tackling crime.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe original idea was to interview policymakers and collect data to bring together case studies of city safety actions in different cities, enabling policymakers to share best practice across regions.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHowever, getting cities to use the results was harder than expected.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018On one hand we got a very positive response,\u2019 said Neef. \u2018On the other hand they (city authorities) are not really open to adopting strategies from other cities because that undercuts their own autonomy.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne of the big problems was that the issues are so different in different parts of Europe.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018In The Hague (the Netherlands) it was youth criminality and home burglary, but in Naples (Italy) the topic was the Mafia and economic crimes,\u2019 he said. \u0027Cities tend to have a politically induced agenda, which makes it difficult to build stable exchanges of knowledge.\u0027\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENeef believes the best way to approach this problem is to start out with areas that have similarities, such as the UK and the Netherlands where government structures and social issues are similar.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018I think we need to scale down our ambition in terms of European harmonisation,\u2019 he said. \u2018We need to start small.\u2019\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/textarea\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\n \u003Cdiv id=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 class=\u0022ecl-help-block description\u0022\u003E\n Please copy the above code and embed it onto your website to republish.\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cinput autocomplete=\u0022off\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022form-5j1c2kyelldnbxo6pzt-lup1ppzl9bcxs-c2fzri-ho\u0022 type=\u0022hidden\u0022 name=\u0022form_build_id\u0022 value=\u0022form-5j1c2kYeLlDnbXo6pZT-LUP1PPzl9BcxS-c2fzRi_Ho\u0022 \/\u003E\n\u003Cinput data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 type=\u0022hidden\u0022 name=\u0022form_id\u0022 value=\u0022modal_form_example_modal_form\u0022 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