EMERITUS (HORIZON-CL3-2021-FCT-01) is an innovation project that aims at laying the foundations for a new generation of technological tools at the service of LEAs/Border Guards while actively empowering them in using these tools at national and cross-border level, facilitating collaborative operations and networking in this domain.
In details, the aim of EMERITUS project is to realize and implement a protocol for effective environmental crime investigation, leveraging on the integration of innovative monitoring and analysis technologies (such as drones, satellite data, virtual sensors, geo-intelligence data, etc.), and on a complementary training programme aimed at fostering Environmental enforcement authorities’ (e.g. LEAs, BGs) intelligence and investigation capabilities at national and cross-border level.

The engagement in the Community of Practice

To achieve the objectives, EMERITUS project will benefit not only from its consortium (8 Police/Border Guard authorities from 5 countries, 4 security experts, 2 training specialists and 6 technological partners) but also on the competence and experiences of a network of external stakeholders: the Community of Practice (CoP).
As a member of the CoP, you will be invited to participate in information sharing activities (also through a dedicated newsletter), meetings and presentation events (covered by the project).These events aim at sharing knowledge from the project results regarding mainly:

- Protocol co-creation: trough the user need assessment activities you will contribute to the creation of a baseline investigation protocol to guide law enforcement agencies to harmonize and standardize their investigation approaches easing information exchange and communication between police forces, nationally and internationally for waste environmental crimes. The protocol will then be combined with EMERITUS technological solutions (e.g. drones, satellites, and sensors) and it will be integrated in the EMERITUS Platform to provide an interactive environment to query the protocol. The interactive integrated investigation protocol gives information on what actions should be taken in specific phases of the investigations for specific crime types in selected scenarios, guiding investigative actions interactively (e.g alerts and interactive pop-ups).

- Geo intelligence platform development and integration: you will be invited to a series of showcases events both in presence and on-line where you will be informed on the EMERITUS platform technologies application and integration, the types of inputs used and outputs generated. You will actively contribute in providing feedbacks related on further purposes the platform can be used for and how other technologies could be integrated to improve the tool according to your expertise and experiences.

- Operational training and testing of the EMERITUS integrated solution: you will contribute in the designing of training programme for Police Authorities and other security practitioners focused on environmental crimes investigation. You will be invited to testing activities related to the EMERITUS platform and protocol in a semi-controlled environment (Italian military base), based on 4 defined use cases (Water contamination detection and prediction, Waste storage centres monitoring, Cross-border illegal waste trafficking, Identification of illegal waste sites) for the monitoring and assessment of the integrated protocol, components’ integration and platform operational application.

- Policy recommendation and roadmap: you will contribute by elaborating a set of policy recommendation and a roadmap for the protocol uptake and its standardization, recalling the need for a medium to long-term vision on how the European Union could better and timely prevent and detect environmental crime incidents, strengthening its legal and regulatory framework.