On April 23, 2024, representatives of the CounteR consortium participated in an international seminar in Sofia, entitled “Protecting Public Spaces – Innovation Challenges and Priorities” and hosted by the PRECRISIS Project.
Experts from EI, IMG, and HFoED attended the event, which gathered multidisciplinary organisations from across Europe to discuss challenges and priorities in protecting public spaces. Georgi Kostadinov from Imagga presented the project and its outcomes to the conference participants including sibling EU-funded project such as DroneWise, GEMS, GATHERINGS, ALLIES, PROTECTOR, APPRAISE, and others. The keynote speech on counter-terror preparedness for urban environments was delivered by Alex Townsend-Drake from the Counter Terrorism Preparedness Network (CTPN).
“This seminar was about sharing insights into the protection of public spaces, challenges and priorities in the use of AI for security, and issues related to testing new technologies. In this context, participants appreciated the outcomes and lessons learned by CounteR”, Borislav Mavrov from EI commented.
“The topic of the panel in which I participated was AI applications in the security sector. In such high-risk applications, where a single inaccurate prediction could compromise the safety of individuals, it is the responsibility of the solution providers to work on mitigating biases inherited from the foundational models they use. Furthermore, similarly to what we do as part of CounteR, real-world pilot tests of these applications are essential before they reach the market, in order to identify potential risks and gaps in the technology“, Georgi Kostadinov from IMG explained.
The conference included three discussion panels: Assessing Terrorist Threat Vectors to Public Spaces; Artificial Intelligence Challenges and Priorities for Security; and Conducting Pilot Testing of New Technologies in Public Spaces.
Notably, during the conference, the CounteR representatives interacted with the TCO Cluster, also in attendance through Martina Bogdanova from the ALLIES project. The partnership between CounteR and the TCO Clustes is set to continue in June, when a joint webinar will be organised.
