SPACEWAYS intends to create a common understanding of the guidelines and standards necessary to develop a Space Traffic Management (STM) concept for the European Union (EU). It also aims to assess European technical available and required capabilities (notably in the field of SSA/SST technologies) with respect to STM requirements; and to provide a set of STM best practices and recommendations in line with EU interests. This includes the preservation of a safe, secure and sustainable space environment as well as the reinforcement of European sovereignty and competiveness. Over its 18-month duration, SPACEWAYS’ first objective will be to analyse the policy, legal and economic context of STM. It will aim to better understand the STM concept’s dynamics worldwide and its consequences for Europe. While key space powers may attempt to create norms and regulations for future STM, SPACEWAYS intends to provide guidelines to support European policy making thereupon. In parallel, another goal will be to assess European capabilities and technology gaps with respect to future STM requirements. SPACEWAYS will identify stakeholders and users’ needs by associating them to the project through a networking platform. It will also proceed to a complete analysis of technical needs defined by future STM possible regulations. Both SSA/SST capabilities and technological developments related to new space missions and functions will be analysed. Here, specific attention will be devoted to mega constellation management, on-orbit operations or launch and re-entry future activities. These parallel lines of work will converge to produce a set of STM guidelines and best practices fully compatible with EU interests. They will be disseminated to relevant communities, to support the EU, as a major space and economic actor, to address future STM challenges.

The research interest for people faces identification, as part of judicial investigations, is well established and remains one of the key elements of success. However, the technologies used in uncontrolled conditions of shooting are still in their early stages of development and have yet to be improved and validated in real live test in order to make them fully operational. Given some recent progress, the recognition task is difficult because face images extracted from video-protection systems are poorly resolved, poorly lit and variably oriented. The PHYSIONOMIE project proposes to develop new tools of physiognomic recognition by: • improving the images of inquiry (pictures or video clips), • exploiting 3D face models to change the orientation of sought faces and then obtaining images with comparable exposures, • defining new similarity measures on partially comparable data (query and reference images are of different nature, presence of expression, occlusion, ...). The accuracy of biometric recognition algorithms depends on the quality of image acquisition and its overall performance depends greatly on the database size used. The creation of a 3D face images database of significant size would require a substantial time. Thus, PHYSIONOMIE will develop tools to build 3D face image models from anthropometric pictures. The validation of this approach will be done through 3D face models produced from low cost sensors such as stereoscopic smartphones, Kinect sensors, etc.., on face pictures acquired during the project. Physiognomic recognition tools will provide as a result a face list ranked in order of relevance, with the sought face that does not always appear at the first rank. Therefore, in PHYSIONOMIE, we propose to incorporate within the demonstrator intuitive and ergonomic capabilities of visual search to navigate through the results list. We will use the new similarity measures as well as soft biometrics (eye colour, presence of scars / tattoos ...) to navigate through the global database from one or more faces of the list returned. End-users, partners of the project, are willing to test and evaluate these tools. In this context, the project will measure the tool potential and will aim to evolve the similarity measure technologies for forensic identification. It will adapt the technology to operational needs, will specify the conditions of use and will measure the gain in efficiency. The possible deployment of a tool with PHYSIONOMIE features in operational services cannot be done without studying the societal acceptability of this technology and the project will conduct a qualitative and quantitative study in this area. Its findings will complement the technology and deployment roadmap, and will specify the contexts of use that are acceptable to society.

Challenges to EU foreign and security policy have been mounting in recent years. The dwindling global engagement of the US and the growing assertiveness of Russia and China hamper the ability of the EU and its member states to shape multilateral rules and compel them to rethink their role along new patterns of multipolar interactions. The collapse or severe weakening of state authority in the EU’s neighbourhood create interconnected challenges extending into policy areas outside the remit of foreign and security policy, thus augmenting the need for an integrated response. Meanwhile, the emergence of nationalist forces often espousing Eurosceptic views complicates efforts to reach intra-EU consensus on international security matters. The interplay between these factors is most evident in the EU’s difficulty in addressing crises and conflicts. JOINT, a project involving 14 partners from 12 countries, will analyse how intra-EU contestation, regional fragmentation and multipolar competition affect the capacity of the EU to set foreign and security policy objectives and generate and integrate diplomatic, military, economic and other sectorial capabilities to handle conflicts, crises and relations with external players. It will devise assessment criteria for effective foreign and security policy governance structures involving EU institutions and member states, encompassing multiple policy areas and unfolding in different formats of engagement of external players. It will survey public perceptions to inform an assessment of the political acceptability of an enhanced EU foreign, security and defence policy. And it will promote mutual learning between researchers and policymakers through the secondment of scholars to the foreign ministries of France, Germany and Italy, as well as the EEAS. JOINT will advance our knowledge of how EU foreign and security policy can become more joined-up and sustainable in an increasingly complex and contested world.

MINDb4ACT is a collaborative project participated by 7 LEAs, think-tanks, reserach centres, universities, industry associations and NGO based in 10 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom). The project will align its research priorities with some of the most relevant issues already identified by the European Commission: Priority 1. Systematizing the available knowledge and expertise to support strategic decision-making Priority 2. Enhancing interdisciplinary fieldwork on terrorists' recruiting grounds, socialisation and techniques Priority 3. Using big data in order to analyse the information related to the communication practices of violent radicalisation Priority 4.Improving existing links between academia including non-EU researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders MINDb4ACT will contribute to such priorities for the improvement of current counter-violent extremism policies (CVEs) in the countries represented in the consortium (Austria, Belgium Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy Poland, Spain and United Kingdom) and the generation of new ones connecting through collaboration ecosystems (innovative, open, participatory, user-centred environments) to co-design interventions such as research actions, exchanges, strategic-policy exercises, training courses and pilot projects based on social innovation and civic engagement schemes (a community of practice of 1,500 people). All actions will be developed in 5 specific domains: prisons and judiciary system; migration hotspots and asylum centres, schools, cities (peri-urban contexts) and the Internet and media. A special contribution of the project will be the integration of technology based practical solutions with the contribution of the industry. As mentioned in the call, MINDb4ACT will NOT be “focused on studying the phenomenon of radicalization" but focused on “developing policy recommendations and practical solutions for end-users"