EMPOWER - Digital Europe Deployment Pilot

The application of AI methods to Big Data heralds a new era in Law Enforcement, increasing the operational capabilities of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) in fighting and predicting crime in a wide number of investigative domains, including the fight against Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE), Terrorism, Cybercrime and the protection of Public Spaces. Promising tech solutions and tools are being developed within the framework of EU and nationally funded R&I projects reaching TRL 6-7 and applicable to a wide number of investigative fields. Building up from such previous and ongoing R&I projects (AIDA, DANTE, GRACE, STARLIGHT), the overall goal of EMPOWER is to foster the uptake of innovative solutions based upon AI powered tools allowing Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to increase their capabilities in such investigative fields. To that end, EMPOWER will pilot test a total of 8 investigative tools in the fields of Image/Video, Voice/Text and Federated Learning, in a concerted effort carried out by a consortium of 10 partners from 5 Member States (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain), representatives of the Security and Law Enforcement R&I community: 2 LEAs (MIR-PN and PJ), 6 companies and SMEs (HERTA, ICTLC, SLG, TGO, TREBE, and VOI) and 2 RTOs (CERTH and VICOM). As a result of the project, 8 tools will be brought to TRL 8 level, following their testing by MIR-PN and PJ with operational datasets in real-life environments. Such tools will be made available to other non-partner LEAs through open repositories and licensing schemes in coordination with key players such as Europol, and EACTDA, ENFSI, EuCB and CERIS. Lastly, anonymised data sets, a training needs analysis, training materials and recommendations about i) Data Interoperability and standardisation, ii) AI Trustworthiness of LEA tools, and iii) the Innovation Uptake models of new AI based solutions by LEAs, will also be widely disseminated.