In this context, under the 4th Call for Proposals of the UIA, their innovative Urban Security related projects have been selected: BeSecure-FeelSecure (City of Piraeus, EL), TO-nite (City of Turin, IT), SURE (City of Tampere, FI). All three projects were centred on a specific local context.

The BeSecure-FeelSecure project promoted a holistic approach towards urban security to tackle security related issues in Piraeus (GR). The project aimed to develop tools and strategies that are to be used both in the physical and cyber space in order to reinforce urban security. As a partner, Efus was in charge of transferability, dissemination and the sharing of experience and expertise.

The BSFS solution was elaborated and evaluated in the City of Piraeus (CoP) – one of the highest populated cities in Greece with long-lasting urban security related problems – and developed a set of ‘replication guidelines’ for the wider adoption of BSFS solution in other cities. These guidelines allowed other cities to ‘tailor’ the BSFS solutions to their own respective local context.

The proposed ‘BSFS-solution’ consists of three interrelated elements:

1) A governance innovation through the creation of a Local Council for Crime Prevention (LCCP)

2) An ICT system for Collaborative Urban Risk Assessment (CURiM) for the collection and analysis of crime-related data

3) A number of social interventions (trainings and sports activities) and spatial measures (Prevention Through Spatial Design) to improve security.

BSFS introduced the Local Council for Crime Prevention (LCCP) in Piraeus, where the urban security city stakeholders were represented (municipality, police, local chambers etc.) under the common goal to decide on activities and interventions that increase city resilience against crime.

Under the supervision of the LCCP, BSFS applied a number of spatial interventions, such as image management, target hardening following the CPTED “Crime Prevention through Environmental Design” model, accompanied by social activation strategies to enhance community cohesion and connectivity at neighbourhood level. The project also offered a digital platform enabling the assessment of combined physical cyber threats and the visualization of risks and other relevant activities through geospatial mapping to facilitate decision-making.

• Interview with Ms. Kyriaki Bourdakou, Economist, Deputy Mayor of the Municipal Police, President of the Local Council of Crime Prevention (LCCP)

Efus contributed to BSFS by being the project’s main transferability channel. Based on its expertise and network of local and regional authorities Efus offered great dissemination potentials at the EU-level and thus plays the role of an impact multiplier. Hence, the Forum played a critical role in communicating the project’s results to urban security stakeholders across EU.

Efus led the activity on the “standardisation and best practices” of the project. This activity, included the replication potential and practices to be followed in order to achieve the BSFS’ transferability to different urban environments. As main output, a BSFS ‘Best practices and transferability implementation’’ tool was produced under the form of an ‘Implementation Manual’ and ‘Implementation Webinars’.

Led by the Municipality of Piraeus (MoP) the project gathers apart from Efus, the SinguarlLogic SA (SLG), the Panteion University (PANT), the University of Piraeus Research Centre (UPRC), the SPACE Hellas (SPACE) and the Ministry of Citizen Protection POLICE (MCP).