Mitigating new threats and adapting investigation strategies in the era of Internet of Things

Overview

Objectives

The aim is to support Police Authorities to better understand the implications of the fast-developing Internet of Things (IoT) environment in order to keep pace with the evolution of its applications, and recognise and tackle the emerging (digital and especially physical) threats that this may pose.

Activities/actions supported

Proposals should examine the extent to which modern vehicle models, smart TVs, private surveillance systems, virtual assistants or voice control systems can be considered as sources of evidence for the collection and analysis of data, as well as how such data can be used for deriving indicators of an imminent threat.

The research should assess legal, organisational and technical implications of IoT development in the context of investigations, and propose strategies, including training materials, tools to foster “by design” a lawful access to relevant evidence.

Anticipated outcomes

Projects’ results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Promoting an increased understanding of Police Authorities regarding the emerging (digital and especially physical) threats of the fast-developing environment of IoT;
• Ensuring modern tools to tackle new and emerging forms of crime pertaining to the development of IoT are provided to European Police Authorities and other relevant security practitioners;
• Lawful access and exploitation of evidence in the environment of the Internet of Things are fortified;
• Best practices (legal, organisational, technical) to access and exploits the IoT in the course of investigation are strengthened, including by developing relevant tools and training materials.

Institution providing the funding

European Commission

Size of funding

EUR 5.000.000

Conditions

Overview of eligibility criteria

Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations ) is eligible to participate.

This topic requires the active involvement, as beneficiaries, of at least 3 Police Authorities from at least 3 different EU Member States or Associated Countries.

Overview of award criteria

Project proposals will be assessed taking intoaccount three criteria: Excellence, Impact, Quality and Efficiency of the implementation. Each criterion will be scored out of 5, with the threshold for individual criteria being 3. The overall threshold, applying to the sum of the three individual scores, is 10.

Procedures

Application procedures

All proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funders & Tenders Portal electronic submission system (accessible via the topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders section): https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/o…

The application form will have two parts:

• Part A (to be filled in directly online) contains administrative information about the applicant organisations (future coordinator and beneficiaries and affiliated entities), the summarised budget for the proposal and call-specific questions;
• Part B (to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system) contains the technical description of the project.

Useful links

Link to funding opportunity

Link to the programme for more info