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 rapidly changing nature of the New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) market and the overall large number of substances that need to be monitored have presented challenges for early warning activities in recent years. Since the number of illicit drug classes is growing exponentially over time, the current challenge is no longer to search substances during an investigation, but rather to provide a sort of preliminary identification of the substance as illicit, i.e., to tag it as such, especially when it is a new type of drug. Today several instruments equipped with up-to-date libraries allow for the rapid identification of drugs of abuse. However, this approach suffers from four main problems: 1) The instruments libraries are not updated regularly; 2) The instruments do not easily overcome the matrix effect; 3) NPSs are trafficked and sold in smaller doses, making their detection and identification more difficult; 4) Routine methods of analysis during forensic analysis are no longer effective in screening drugs of abuse, the parent drugs but also their metabolites, due to the lack of structural information and commercial reference materials. NARCOSIS (Non-tArgeted foRensic multidisCiplinary platfOrm for inveStigatIon of drug-related fatalitieS) will provide a set of features for fast, robust, and reliable multidisciplinary approach to harmonise forensic investigations by means of an up-to-date and updateable diagnostic platform with the following key features: 1) A set of selected orthogonal instruments operable both on-site and in laboratories (Raman/SERS, IR, HSI, HRMS) will be adapted to be used with the NARCOSIS platform; 2) Build a comparable and shareable (cross-organisation) reference spectra (meta-spectra) database for faster detection and identification of drugs of abuse; 3) Create an AI-assisted spectra management and integration toolkit for analytical measurements to support the EU Early Warning System to rapidly detect, assess and respond to NPS.

In a world where disasters and crises also evolve and cross boundaries with speed and ease , their complexity and magnitude increase, and societal repercussions often reach severe scales, it is imperative to increase citizens’ upkeep and feeling of safety and provide affected people the top-level healthcare that modern technology and current civil protection systems can offer. However, today’s emergency medical services and non-medical civil protection practitioners in a mass casualty incident scene, striving to save lives and nursing the injured, often have to rely on complicated or even outdated procedures (multiple protocols or lack of homogeneity in response methods and guidelines) and technology of the past. NIGHTINGALE will develop, integrate, test, deploy, demonstrate and validate a Novel Integrated Toolkit for Emergency Medical Response (NIT-MR) which ensures an upgrade to Pre-hospital life support and Triage. This will comprise a multitude of tools, services and applications required for 1) upgrading evaluation of injured and affected population and handle casualties (Triage) by offering them the means to perform digital identification, allow traceability, support fast diagnosis and prognosis and continuous monitoring and enable accurate classification of medical condition; 2) optimising pre-hospital life support and damage control through AI-based tracking, tracing, routing and utilisation enhancements of assets, resources and capacities as well as enabling continuous monitoring and correlation of vital signs and actions; 3) allowing shared response across emergency medical services, non-medical civil protection personnel, volunteers and citizens. The NIT-MR is provided at the service of the emergency medical services, non-medical civil protection personnel, volunteers and citizens for extensive testing, training and validation in the framework of a rich Training and Validation Programme of 5 Round Tables, 3 TTXs, 1 Laboratory Integration and 3 FSXs.

While time is an important factor for successful outcome of the crime investigation, the traditional forensic examinations are usually time consuming. It can be very problematic when investigations are underway and quick results are needed. Traces must be detected on-site as soon as possible before they degrade and loose forensic information important for criminal investigation. Based on the results of the FORLAB project, the aim of the RISEN project is the development of a set of real-time contactless sensors for the optimization of the trace, detection, visualisation, identification and interpretation on site, with a consequent reduction of the time and resources in the laboratory, and for a fast exchange of information among LEAs. The new proposed approach could be applied to the classical forensic investigations and to disaster sites, e.g. after a terrorist attack. The objectives of the RISEN project will be obtained by: -Developing and demonstrating contactless, non-destructive, automated sensors to identify, select and label trace materials; -Processing and sending in real-time acquired in-situ data to a 3D Augmented Crime Scene Investigation system to produce an interactive 3D model of the scene with position and labelling of traces and relative results of the on-site analysis. The recreated 3D model of the scene resorts to augmented reality techniques for sensor data, collected evidence and identified points of interest in order to deliver a realistic and immersive visual environment for investigators, allowing them to conduct highly detailed investigations. The crime scenes, with analytical information from traces, will be digitally frozen to be available at any time for several purposes in the criminal justice system. The identified traces will be digitally marked and inventoried, and a digitalised Chain of Custody will be established in real-time implementing mechanisms that assure data integrity over its lifecycle.

For the EU health industry to be competitive and to sustainably deliver internationally leading care quality, it is important that EU regulation, guidelines and standards enable effective and interoperable digital health innovation and promote a vibrant entrepreneurial EU sector. Safety and competitiveness are not mutually exclusive. To deliver on them requires a pace and intensity of technological innovation that is matched by intensive regulatory innovation. Smarter, adaptive, dynamic, and evidence-based regulatory approaches are needed, based on real world experience in representative use scenarios. CYMEDSEC has been designed with an optimum consortium of regulatory, cybersecurity, technology, evaluation, and clinical EU experts to address exactly this challenge. It provides close feedback loops between new technological paradigms and recommendation of regulatory approaches, fostering regulatory science fresh thinking. It will deliver novel security-by-design solutions for the oversight of ‘Internet of Medical Things’ (IoMT) devices, including connected in vitro diagnostics. IoMT ‘fleet’ cybersecurity oversight systems will be developed. Use cases explored include remote patient monitoring and critical care scenarios, for which the project will develop novel and highly secure gateway middleware. Our technological and methodological advancement will go hand-in-hand with detailed review of regulations and guidelines, the formal creation of a new IoMT cybersecurity standard, and evidence collection from representative case studies. These objectives are holistically interlinked, with learnings form each work area feeding into development and proposals in other areas. Key to this is the in-project development of a cybersecurity benefit-risk toolbox, which will further develop the state of the art, using qualitative and quantitively approaches, and will make these available as easily usable and findable Open-Source resources for manufactures and regulatory bodies.