The main goal of EU-CIP is to establish a novel pan European knowledge network for Resilient Infrastructures, which will enable policy makers to shape and produce data-driven evidence-based policies, while boosting the innovation capacity of Critical Infrastructures (CI) operators, authorities, and innovators (including SMEs). In this direction, the partners have already established the European Cluster for Securing Critical infrastructures (ECSCI), which brings together 22 projects that collaborate in CI Resilience. EU-CIP will leverage the capacity, organization, community, and achievements of the ECSCI cluster towards establishing an EU-wide knowledge network with advanced analytical and innovation support capabilities. The project’s analytics capabilities will fulfil the reporting requirements listed in the call in terms of the number and the (semestrial) frequency of the reports. To facilitate information collection and analysis, the project will establish a FAIR data observatory of research projects, research outcomes, technologies, standards, and policies. Along with analytical capabilities for evidence based policies, the project will organize and offer a rich set of innovation support services to EU projects and other innovators in CI security and resilience. These services will include training, support in business planning and access to finance, as well as support in the validation, standardization, and certification of novel solutions. The projects outcomes will be integrated and made available through a Knowledge Hub, which will provide a singly entry point to the EU-CIP results. EU-CIP will build a vibrant ecosystem of over 1000 stakeholders around this knowledge-hub. To animate and grow the project’s community, EU-CIP will execute an ambitious set of dissemination activities, including the establishment and organization of an annual conference on Critical Infrastructures Resilience, which will become a flagship event for critical infrastructures.

The Mediterranean and Black Sea region is characterised by a very volatile and dynamically changing security environment that pose severe threats and challenges on the societies and prosperity. The MEDEA project, during its 66 months of implementation provides funding for four interrelated actions: (i) Establish and Operate the MEDEA network, a multi-disciplinary network of security practitioners, with active links to policy makers and users/providers of security innovations across the M&BS countries focusing in Border Protection and other Security- and Disaster-Related tasks. During the project duration, MEDEA members will engage in activities towards maintaining its sustainability and longevity after the financing of this project ends, (ii) Engage participants in anticipatory governance on emerging security challenges that the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions would face in the coming years (present until +10 years), which concretely operationalizes the backbone of the project in a triple structure: a) understanding unsatisfactory state of play, b) design the desirable future and c) define a resilient pathway on how to achieve this, (iii) Push for the “co-creation” of security technology and capabilities innovations between practitioners and innovation suppliers, which is based upon their evaluation and prioritization on multi-criteria analysis (technology, operational and cost-benefit, etc.) and also linked to Human Development, Policy Making and Organizational Improvements in-terms of facilitating its use by the practitioners (iv) Establish and annually update the Mediterranean Security Research and Innovation Agenda (MSRIA), that identifies areas where security & defence research is needed and the establishment of recommendations for European Security & Defence technology investments.

The programming of Security R&I is a highly sensitive exercise which has grown in complexity during the past years. Moreover, the uptake of innovation stemming from EU-funded security R&I projects remains a challenge. The goal of ENACT is to set up a Knowledge Network for Security R&I in the Fighting Crime and Terrorism area capable of i) supporting the EU-funded FCT security R&I cycle and the overall community and market actors with actionable evidence, and ii) boosting the Innovation Uptake of the outcomes and results stemming from FCT Security funded R&I projects. ENACT brings together the most unique blend of knowledge, background, skills, resources and connections to: i) deliver a network-enabling service that facilitates the exchange of knowledge and value within the wider FCT community; ii) catalogue, aggregate and exploit the existing knowledge on the FCT area ensuring continuous availability of a structured knowledge base accessible to decision makers of the various R&I domains; iii) communicate project activities and disseminate & exploit project findings in a timely manner, ensuring continuous availability of updated actionable knowledge in each of the four domains addressed, namely capabilities, technology, market and SSH; iv) foster cooperation between FCT market actors in order to improve the market visibility and the uptake of innovation, and; v) ensure the sustainability of the “knowledge as a service” model and the enabled networking environment beyond the project duration. To operationalise these five pillars, ENACT will implement coordination and support measures to extract information from the FCT R&I Community making use of the project’s connections with specific Knowledge Hubs. It will also classify the information according to a recognisable taxonomy, define concrete metrics, derive results based on the exploitation of the acquired information and feed them back into the community, thus contributing to a more impactful EU FCT R&I effort.