September 2022 – September is the start of a new ‘school term’ for the IcARUS project, which reached its mid-point before the summer and is now working on its second phase, i.e. the design of practical, useful tools for cities and end-users in four areas of local crime prevention: juvenile delinquency; radicalisation leading to violent extremism; designing and managing safe public spaces, and preventing and reducing trafficking and organised crime.
Led by Efus, this four-year Horizon 2020 project (2020-2024) gathers 17 partners and aims to learn from past experiences in urban security policies and practices throughout Europe in order to rethink, redesign and adapt existing tools and methods to help local security actors anticipate and better respond to security challenges.
Looking at 30 years of crime prevention policies and local practices
The first two years of the project were devoted to analysing the knowledge on local crime prevention accumulated in the past 30 years, and drawing learnings that can help improve policies and practices to deal with today’s urban security issues. Led by the University of Leeds, IcARUS conducted a state of the art review. Complementary to the academic research, Efus produced an inventory of tools and practices in Europe. The results of both studies were presented at the project’s mid-term conference in May, in Riga (Latvia).
Based on this comprehensive knowledge base, the project produced two concise, user-friendly factsheets that are accessible either on the Efus or the IcARUS website.
The first factsheet is a general presentation of why and how to use academic research to inform urban security strategies and policies. > You can download it here.
The second is a reader-friendly summary of the main findings of the state-of-the art review
> You can download it here.
Local workshops to identify needs and solutions
Building on this in-depth research, the project started its practical second phase, which aims at developing tools to respond to the specific challenges in the IcARUS partner cities, following a co-construction approach to urban security solutions. The first of a series of local co-production workshops in the six partner cities (Lisbon (PT), Nice (FR), Riga (LV), Rotterdam (NL), and Turin (IT)) were organised between May and early July.
Each workshop included representative local stakeholders, with attendees from civil society organisations, private sector companies, police and other local actors. Using the Design Thinking methodology, the participants worked on identifying and defining their specific local issues and ideating concrete solutions.
Now, based on the needs identified during the local workshops, the IcARUS project is working on developing six concrete tools for local authorities and end-users. It will also provide them with guidance on how to use social and technological innovation to support the delivery of projects.
> More information on each of these workshops here.
