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In recent years, many criminal acts, including terrorist attacks, have been perpetrated at mass gatherings in Europe. Tackling this entails numerous challenges. Initially, the key is to deter or prevent such outrages, but if they do take place, the perpetrators must be pursued successfully while ensuring the highest level of protection for everyone under threat.
Therefore, it is crucial to explore new tools and methodologies for strategic and operational activities aimed at combating such threats.
Driven by security practitioners’ needs, the EU-funded LETS-CROWD project aims to create guidelines for implementation of the European Security Model (ESM) for the protection of crowds via a set of supporting toolkits to foster communication and cooperation between law-enforcement and civil protection agencies, first responders and citizens. It puts people at the centre of its research, assessing how security measures affect them and how they perceive such measures.
Tools developed under LETS-CROWD include a new methodology for formulating effective policies, and ensuring situational awareness and deployment of appropriate solutions in fast-changing conditions. Balancing security with respect for citizens’ rights, the novel methodology includes a dynamic risk assessment, enabling behaviour to be monitored to detect abnormal patterns and other precursors to threats, such as suspicious activity, including online.
A policymaking tool kit comprises an empirical database, statistics and an analytical modelling tool, all of which are designed to support long-term and strategic decision-making on security.
Law-enforcement agencies are also provided with real-time models and techniques for applying semantic intelligence to social networks and the internet, and intended to facilitate the forecasting of crowd behaviour. Other features are innovative communication procedures and methods for enabling computers to gain in-depth understanding of images.
The performance, transferability and large-scale deployment potential of the project’s tools are being evaluated via practical demonstrations involving seven law-enforcement agencies and relevant emergency services. In time, these will pave the way for implementation of a common ESM for mass gatherings.