Policymakers and public health experts unanimously recognise the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable persons: even in countries with well-developed responses, the outbreak and its repercussions imperil the basic well-being of social groups whose livelihoods are already precarious, while the uneven distribution of suffering threatens to aggravate inequality and division. One complicating factor here is the intersectional nature of health and socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Another is the complexity of risk in contemporary socioecological systems. The COVINFORM project will draw upon intersectionality theory and complex systems analysis in an interdisciplinary critique of COVID-19 responses on the levels of government, public health, community, and information and communications. The project will conduct research on three levels: 1) on an EU27 MS plus UK level, quantitative secondary data will be analysed and models will be developed; 2) Within 15 target countries, documentary sources on the national level and in at least one local community per country will be analysed; 3) in 10 target communities, primary empirical research will be conducted, utilising both classical and innovative quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g. visual ethnography, participatory ethnography, and automated analysis of short video testimonials). Promising practices will be evaluated in target communities through case studies spanning diverse disciplines (social epidemiology, the economics of unpaid labour, the sociology of migration, etc.) and vulnerable populations (COVID-19 patients, precarious families, migrating health care workers, etc.). The project will culminate in the development of an online portal and visual toolkit for stakeholders in government, public health, and civil society integrating data streams, indices and indicators, maps, models, primary research and case study findings, empirically grounded policy guidance, and creative assessment tools.

A methodology for tracking and analysing the needs for standardization and certification harmonization thorough the project life cycle will be defined and enforced, which will allow the early identification of issues related to the conceptualization, design, implementation, integration and deployment of tools for support the EU disaster resiliency; which will be facilitated by a complete consultation strategy to the different stakeholders that are expected to act at each capability development phase, ranging from providers to end users. On these grounds H2020-VALKYRIES will develop, integrate and demonstrate capabilities for enabling immediate and coordinated emergency response including search and rescue, security and health, in scenarios of natural/provoked catastrophes with multiple victims, with special application in cases in which several regions or countries are affected and hence greater interoperability being required. H2020-VALKYRIES will propose both design and development of a modular, interoperable, scalable and secure platform, which will allow the integration between legacy solutions and new technologies. The platform will be able to deploy services and dynamically adapt its behaviour, as the emergency requires it. A series of use cases and demonstrators will be developed placing an emphasis on cross-frontier and cross-sectorial BLOS (Beyond Line of Sight) scenarios, where the usual communications infrastructure could have been damaged, and emergency response teams are deployed without an accurate view of the operation environment

The 2016 European Union Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS) highlights the need to enhance external policies by pursuing better communication, information-sharing, joint reporting, analysis and response planning between member state embassies, EU delegations, Commission services, EU Special Representatives and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions. The CIVILnEXt project supports the development of a solution addressing existing “fragmentation” and closing “gaps”. To provide civilian CSDP missions with the next generation of secure and cost-effective information systems: a situational awareness, information exchange and operation control platform (OCP). Fully informed of contributing initiatives in civilian CSDP and EU external action, the project will aim to develop solutions leveraging on the results extracted from projects funded by the EU. The common challenge in CIVILnEXt is to develop, test and validate a cost-effective and interoperable operation control platform (OCP) that will support the conduct of civilian CSDP missions. The OCP will improve coordination in EU external action through better information exchange, situational awareness and operation control in diverse theaters of operation. It will support the EU’s comprehensive approach in complex missions, including the civil-military cooperation within CSDP, facilitate the engagement CSDP actors, creating links EU Delegations, FRONTEX, ECHO and other EU activities, member states, as appropriate, and other partners such as the UN and regional organisations. CIVILnEXt engages the participation of four national competent authorities, active in EU external policies and the UN organisations IOM. They share the need to become beneficiaries of procurement results that enhance the effectiveness of civilian CSDP. They are co-financing the action under one single joint procurement, supported by technical and policy advisors, with extensive CSDP experience.

LEAs use the data in their information systems as their basis for making decisions that affect the safety of European citizens. According to a recent report of the European Court of Auditors on the EU Information Systems use, it has been found out that individual countries have different perception and methodologies on how data management should be addressed; officers from LEAs have stated that not all datasets are included in their systems, while other data is either not complete and accurate or not entered in a timely manner. The same report states that there are regulatory and “cultural” issues, according to which some countries do not make all the functions offered in the central EU systems available through their national systems. TENACITy envisions to address these challenges by proposing a 3-pillar approach: (a) Modern and effective tools for exploitation of travel intelligence data by security authorities: TENACITy proposes an interoperable open architecture for the integration and analysis of multiple transactional, historical and behavioural data from a variety of sources, by exploiting game changing digital technologies; (b) Training and sensitisation of LEAs’ personnel: TENACITy envisions the design of a “living lab” to be established to organise hackathons, workshops for all relevant stakeholders who would benefit from the use of passenger data and digital technologies proposed; (c) Holistic approach to crime prevention: TENACITy vision is to implement and demonstrate a Travel Intelligence Governance Framework that will incorporate a holistic approach to crime prevention, will ensure that the proposed digital technologies will support the identification of the modus operandi of criminal and terrorism organizations and will include policy makers in the governance process, examining how the new tools will provide new capabilities to shape the regulations.