Within the field of security, Customs and Border inspection have not had breakthrough technological developments in the last 20 years, since the introduction of X-ray screening. The limits of these current technologies are accentuated by the increasing diversity and novelty in trafficking materials, tools and methods. These limitations combined with the growing needs of inspection and control call for a disruptive innovative solution. Wanting to move a step up from the existing planar scanning methods with limited material identification results, several studies have identified potential solutions focused on: - High energy 3D X-ray tomography - Neutron interrogation/photofission - Nuclear resonance fluorescence (NRR) While these show good results and performances, they also have several important drawbacks, which limits their possible uses. Moreover, these solutions do not have common technological bricks meaning they can only lead to separate disposals. The proposed MULTISCAN3D investigates a new all-in-one system whose purpose is to become simultaneously a user-friendly, flexible, relocatable solution offering high-quality information for: - Fast high energy 3D X-rays tomography (as first line) - Neutron interrogation/photofission (as second line) - Narrow gamma ray beam based NRR (as second line) MULTISCAN3D will start by investigating and defining needs and requirements, in a technologically-neutral way, with Europe’s most prominent Customs Authorities which will be translated to technical specifications. The main body of the research will be focused on three parts, following which, lab validations and real-environment demonstration will be carried out. These three work areas are: - Laser-plasma based accelerators as X-ray sources - 3D reconstruction for multi-view configurations and data processing - Detectors and source monitoring At the same time complementary techniques with chemical and SNM identification capabilities will be investigated.

Market trends show advanced usage of safety-critical systems with novel services based on smart data analytics. Customers require continuous updates to applications and services and seek lower cost (Bill-of-Material, BoM) and easy to install solutions (maintenance) for safety-critical cyber-physical systems (CPS). To respond to these trends, TRANSACT will leverage edge and cloud technologies and establish business partner eco-systems to enhance safety-critical systems in regulated environments. TRANSACT will transform local safety critical CPS into distributed safety-critical CPS solutions with a heterogeneous architecture composed of components along a device-edge-cloud continuum. The distributed solutions incorporating data and cloud services will simplify the CPS devices, reducing their software footprint, and consequently their BoM and Lower of Cost or Market. Business-wise, system manufacturers thus transform to solution providers. To that end TRANSACT will research distributed reference architectures for safety-critical CPS that rely on edge and cloud computing. These architectures shall enable seamless mixing of on-device, edge and cloud services while assuring flexible yet safe and secure deployment of new applications, and independent releasing of edge and cloud-based components vs. on-device. Moreover, safety, performance, cybersecurity and privacy of data will be kept on the same level as on-device only safety-critical CPS architectures. By also integrating AI services into distributed CPS, TRANSACT will enable fast development of innovative value-based services and business models leading to faster market introduction in the various multi-billion euro markets addressed by TRANSACT. Encouraged by ARTEMIS' 2019 publication on embedded intelligence, TRANSACT will be a crucial enabler for Europe to shift towards a solution-oriented market "so as to still matter in the Embedded & Cyber-Physical Systems field of tomorrow’s world."