EU Critical Infrastructures (CIs) are increasingly at risk from cyber-physical attacks and natural hazards. Research and emerging solutions focus on the protection of individual CIs, however, the interrelationships between Cis has become more complex for example in smart cities and managing the impacts of cascading effects and enabling rapid recovery is becoming more pertinent and highly challenging. PRECINCT aims to connect private and public CI stakeholders in a geographical area to a common cyber-physical security management approach which will yield a protected territory for citizens and infrastructures, a ‘PRECINCT’ that can be replicated efficiently for a safer Europe and will deliver: 1. A PRECINCT Framework Specification for systematic CIs security and resilience management fulfilling industry requirements. 2. A Cross-Facility collaborative cyber-physical Security and Resilience management Infrastructure enabling CI stakeholder communities to create AI-enabled PRECINCT Ecosystems and enhanced resilience support services. 3. A vulnerability assessment tool that uses Serious Games to identify potential vulnerabilities to cascading effects and to quantify resilience enhancement measures. 4. PRECINCT’s Digital Twins to represent the CIs network topology and metadata profiles, applying closed-loop Machine Learning techniques to detect violations and provide optimised response and mitigation measures and automated forensics. 5. Smart PRECINCT Ecosystems, deployed in four large-scale Living Labs and Transferability Validation Demonstrators, will provide measurement-based evidence of the targeted advantages and will realize Digital Twins corresponding to the CIs located therein, include active participation of emergency services and city administrations with results feeding back to the Digital Twins developments. 6. Sustainability related outputs including Capacity Building, Dissemination, Exploitation, Resilience Strategy, Policy/Standardisation recommendations

Trafficking of human beings (THB) and child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSA/CSE) are two big problems in our society. Inadvertently, new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have provided a space for these problems to develop and take new forms, made worse by the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, technical and legal tools available to stakeholders that prevent, investigate, and assist victims – such as law enforcement agencies (LEAs), prosecutors, judges, and civil society organisations (CSOs) – fail to keep up with the pace at which criminals use new technologies to continue their abhorrent acts. Furthermore, assistance to victims of THB and CSA/CSE is often limited by the lack of coordination among these stakeholders. In this sense, there is a clear and vital need for joint work methodologies and the development of new strategies for approaching and assisting victims. In addition, due to the cross-border nature of these crimes, harmonisation of legal frameworks from each of the affected countries is necessary for creating bridges of communication and coordination among all those stakeholders to help victims and reduce the occurrence of these horrendous crimes. To address these challenges, the HEROES project comes up with an ambitious, interdisciplinary, international, and victim-centred approach. The HEROES project is structured as a comprehensive solution that encompasses three main components: Prevention, Investigation and Victim Assistance. Through these components, our solution aims to establish a coordinated contribution with LEAs by developing an appropriate, victim-centred approach that is capable of addressing specific needs and providing protection. The HEROES project’s main objective is to use technology to improve the way in which help and support can be provided to victims of THB and CSA/CSE.