FOI contributes to the prevention of terrorism and organised crime in Europe

In the face of strong competition, FOI is to take part in one of thirteen research projects to be awarded funding for research relating to the fight against terrorism under the EU’s security research programme.

— The project concerns the improvement of cooperation between countries in order to fight terrorism and organised crime more effectively, says Martin Rantzer, Head of Division at FOI.

The aim of the project is to enable the various authorities and nations to exchange information rapidly, securely and efficiently and to provide mutual support in the collation and analysis of data. This is essential to the ability to give or receive early warning of planned terrorist actions and other serious crimes.

— Within FOI we have a number of different programme areas which will play an important role in this project, says Martin Rantzer. For example FOI is among the world leaders in the field of information fusion and the tools and methods for handling scenarios. Information fusion is an extremely important area for the development of methods for the rapid handling and collation of large amounts of data. Advanced scenario methodology is also of key importance, for example in various types of analyses and threat assessments.

The project is called Highway to security: Secure interoperability of intelligence services and is led by Saab. In addition to FOI a dozen different companies and organisations will be collaborating in this project, including EADS, TeliaSonera and Nokia. Authorities from Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries are involved in a reference group. From Sweden the authorities taking part include the Swedish Emergency Management Agency, the Swedish Rescue Services Agency, the National Police Board, Swedish Customs and the Swedish Coast Guard.

Among the 156 proposals submitted to the European Commission, a total of 13 projects have been selected for funding. A panel of independent experts have been responsible for the selection. The total budget for the projects selected for funding amounts to 15 million EUR. Security research will form part of the EU’s forthcoming Seventh Research Framework Programme (2007-2013) in which the research area Security and Space has a proposed annual budget of approximately 570 million EUR.