LETSCROWD (LEAs oriented human factor methods and Toolkit for the Security and protection of CROWDs in mass gatherings)

Tragic attacks taking place across Europe over the past few years have often caught law enforcement agencies (LEAs) off-guard. Terrorists’ operating methods have never been so unpredictable, and any mass gathering now has authorities on edge. LEAs have a desperate need for innovative security tools and methodologies to help them face these threats.

The LETSCROWD project was inspired by the European Security Model (ESM), which defines central challenges, priorities, principles, and guidelines to deal with security issues within the EU. The project, which focuses on mass gatherings, has been following the ESM’s main principle to create guidelines and support tools, with emphasis being put on prevention and anticipation.

The key point here is to deter, prevent, and effectively respond to criminal and/or terrorist actions, thus increasing the sense of security while balancing security and citizen rights.

LETSCROWD helps LEAs by enabling the creation of signals, the modelling of venues and incidents, as well as by including relevant information such as voice recordings, images, and videos.

The core of the system is LETSCROWD Server, a platform which enables plugging in different specialised tools and the integrated management of any given event or incident. Under this umbrella, the different LETSCROWD specialised tools are deployed:

• LETSCROWD’s Semantic Intelligence Engine (SIE) can gather, monitor and analyse information published online in relation to a mass gathering, before and during a given event.
• The Dynamic Risk Assessment (DRA) dynamically assesses risk by processing weak signals – suspicious signs of activity that individually do not constitute a threat but can become a risk when considered together – and other varying events.
• The Policy Making Toolkit (PMT) helps decision makers in defining clearance and policies for a specific event. The tool covers data management, approval, policy creation and implementation for an event.
• The Crowd Modelling and Planning Tool (CMP) allows users to plan ahead for crowds attending a mass gathering event, run scenarios during its execution, and use these scenarios in post-event analysis and training.
• The Real-time evacuation tool (RTE) allows LEAs to plan and find out about the potential evacuation times for crowds. It can assess the impact of a certain evacuation strategy within a few seconds.
• The Innovative Communication procedures (ICP-Communication toolkit), aims at raising awareness among event organisers, security officers and first responders.
• Last, but not least, the system also uses machine learning techniques for a human-centred computer vision (HCV) that supports LEAs in the use of video surveillance systems.

On top of the above, the LETSCROWD Server provides a number of horizontal functionalities such as secure messaging among all the officers involved in the management of an event, real time tracking of officers, vehicles and other assets deployed in the field, etc.

LETSCROWD results have been evaluated by LEAs and experts from over 10 countries, achieving very positive marks.

• Over 70% of the LEAs indicated that LETSCROWD could effectively help them carry out their activities.
• Over 71% of the LEAs indicated that LETSCROWD was realistically applicable to their organizations.
• Over 82% of the LEAs indicated that LETSCROWD Server was useful to them.

If you would like to learn more about LETSCROWD, you can contact amarques.etraid@grupoetra.com or visit www.letscrowd.eu.