CENTRIC’s director, Prof. Babak Akhgar, travelled to Finland during the first week of June to check on the progress of its community policing project – UNITY. The event served as a feedback and review meeting to discuss the outcomes of the projects recent pilot held in both Helsinki and Tampere, Finland.
For more information on Unity, its objectives and outputs please visit https://www.unity-project.eu
Our exciting SCAAN project, the Security, Communication and Analysis Network, a collaboration between IOM and CENTRIC, continues to make excellent progress.
This week a successful launch event took place at Sheffield Hallam University, for more details see the press release from IOM here or check out our new SCANN Video below for further information about the project.
On the 30th of May, CENTRIC showcased AUGGMED at the National Space Conference in Manchester. During this three-day conference, CENTRIC welcomed a multitude of delegates from the space sector to try out the serious game platform. Working in collaboration with SERCO, delegates were shown how AUGGMED can be used to support multi-agency work, illustrating how intelligence can be gathered and then relayed to trainees, to train decision making skills within a virtual environment. The stand was visited by IET, who did a feature on AUGGMED.
To see more on this event visit the AUGGMED twitter feed:
On Friday the 28th of April, CENTRIC hosted the BBC Click show at Sheffield Hallam University and demonstrated the AUGGMED training platform. The demonstration included use of the simulator for security safety training and first responder triage training following an attack on a popular underground train station.
The propagation of modern technology into every day life has enabled law enforcement agencies and first responders to enhance their training and response capabilities through new technologies. This adoption of advanced technology into main stream use has enabled the AUGGMED project to be developed with end users in mind and is reported on in this weeks episode of BBC Click.
Watch the click episode here.(http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08vgqh9/click-50-shapes-of-goo)
On the 3rd and 4th of May 2017, CENTRIC with the AUGGMED project ran a simulated training feature at the Counter Terror Expo in the Olympia Conference Centre, London. An international selection of attendees signed up to a collaborative training session with the AUGGMED team requiring them to make complex decisions within a potential terror threat scenario. A plethora of data was collected from both guests and trainees which will be used to further enhance knowledge surrounding the field of VR training, inform counter terrorism activities, and enhance collaboration between first responder agencies.
The event was attended by international television agencies including Sky News and the BBC, the AUGGMED project was specifically featured on the Sky News Swipe program above.
AUGGMED is a Horizon 2020 funded research project involving multiple partners from throughout the European Union. The purpose of the project is to develop a serious games platform which enables online, multi-user training for first responders using numerous input modes including: desktop; touch screen; Virtual Reality (VR); and Mixed Reality (MR). The final goal of the project is to provide a next generation training tool which can be used to simulate multi-agency training scenarios in events involving fires, terror incidents and cyber-attacks.
AUGGMED is currently two thirds of the way through with one year of development left before completion. The AUGGMED platform is currently in the alpha stage of development with live testing being performed alongside end users in several project pilots.
The first pilot was held at West Yorkshire police’s Carrgate facility and simulated a terrorist incident on an undisclosed airport. Firearms police trainers used the AUGGMED platform to assess trainee’s situational awareness and decision capabilities within the simulation which required them to respond to a terror incident involving armed suspects and a large fire.
In March 2017, the second AUGGMED pilot was held in Barcelona with train security personnel from Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) and paramedics from Sistema D’Emergencies Mediques (SEM).
This pilot required trainees to use virtual reality, touch screen and standard desktop devices to simulate multiple ‘Hot Bag’ scenarios and post explosion triage scenarios. The pilot allowed multiple trainees to work together, make decisions and solve problems collaboratively under the close observations of the trainers and observers.
The pilot required CENTRIC and the other technical partners to set up a customised training suite with its own internal network, virtual reality devices, observation room and training theatre. Throughout the pilot CENTRIC was responsible for maintaining the stability and reliability of the AUGGMED system and underlying architecture whilst familiarising the end users with the system.
The Serious & Organised Crime National Conference (SOCNC) showcased some of the key practical initiatives that those on the frontline have been deploying since the Strategy’s launch. Through a combination of presentations and breakout sessions it equipped a wide range of practitioners to develop their own collaborative response, responding to the threat of serious and organised crime in their local area. At the event held at Villa Park, Birmingham on March 16th 2017, CENTRIC exhibited its work around Open-Source Intelligence (the OSINT Hub) and Community Policing (the UNITY project) alongside project partner SERCO.
Find out more at: https://socnc.co.uk/home
An invited Talk was given by Professor Simon Andrews (CCRC, CENTRIC and Dept. of Computing) at Sheffield University iSchool, on 9th March, 2017.
Title: Organised Crime and Social Media; detecting and corroborating weak signals of Human Trafficking online.
Abstract: This talk described an approach for detecting the presence or emergence of Organised Crime (OC) via signals on Social Media. It showed how words and phrases, used by members of the public in Social Media, can be treated as weak signals of OC, enabling information to be classified according to a taxonomy of OC. Formal Concept Analysis is used to group information sources, according to Crime and Location, thus providing a means of corroboration and creating ‘OC Concepts’ that can be used to alert police analysts to the possible presence of OC. The analyst, using a map-based user interface, is able to ‘drill down’ into an OC Concept of interest, discovering additional corroborated information that may be pertinent to the crime. Open Source data, involving possible weak signals of Trafficking in Human Beings is used to illustrate the system. The work presented in the talk was the result of project funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme.
SAS have released a number of articles detailing how SAS and CENTRIC collaborated during the Athena project to improve disaster response. SAS spoke with Professor Babak Akhgar, director of CENTRIC, and Professor Simon Andrews as well as Athena Project Manager Jessica Gibson (West Yorkshire for Innovation) .
Charles Senabulya, Vice President for SAS UK & Ireland, said about the project:
“To protect citizens, emergency services must act quickly and accurately assess new threats to deliver a rapid, co-ordinated and effective response. ATHENA uses intelligence on the ground combined with analytics to deepen insight into ongoing incidents, supporting emergency services in delivering a faster, more streamlined response and creating closer collaboration with the citizens they work to protect. From simulated earthquakes in Turkey to hypothetical mudslides in Slovenia, the prototype ATHENA solution continues to show great promise.”
Read more in the links below:
https://www.sas.com/en_gb/customers/project-athena.html#
https://smartcitiesworld.net/news/uk-police-use-analytics-to-improve-disaster-response-1318
Director of CENTRIC, Professor Babak Akhgar, presented at the Inaugural Yorkshire and Humber Cyber Protect Business Conference on the 28th February, 2017.
Organised by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Cyber Crime Unit, Professor Akhgar joined speakers from Law Enforcement and Industry in order to raise awareness around cybersecurity within the region. Professor Akhgar’s presentation was titled: “Cyber Situational Awareness, from Concept to Realisation”.
Some of the reactions from the conference and a video for the presentation are included below:
Next up Babak Akhga from @sheffhallamuni talking about cyber situational awareness #yhcyberprotect pic.twitter.com/Ra9lHdA3Ut
— Yorkshire & Humber Regional Cyber Crime Unit (@YH_CyberProtect) February 28, 2017
https://twitter.com/Di_Burton/status/836570804561268737
Prof. Babak Akhgar on the topic of tomorrow's cyber threats very informative and interesting. We can all learn something. #yhcyberprotect
— WYP Fraud Team (@WYP_EcoCrmUnit) February 28, 2017
Prof. Babak Akhgar on the topic of tomorrow's cyber threats, very interesting #yhcyberprotect
— James Hood (@jameshoodlcf) February 28, 2017
#YHCyberProtect …Akhgar meets Heisenberg: you can't observe; you have to be part of the action. Be there…www.gibcyber.com
— ProfDanny (@DanielGDresner) February 28, 2017
Key diagram from Babak Akhgar on the anatomy of a cyber crime. #yhcyberprotect pic.twitter.com/z0P7YQ7WR9
— Bob's Business (@BobsBusiness) February 28, 2017
https://twitter.com/srcowen/status/836569415546191873
Presentation Video