European Success Stories: The Best Tools Worldwide

Friday, February 15, 2013
Room 312 (Hynes Convention Center)
Stephan Lechner , European Commission, Joint Research Center, Ispra, Italy
Scientific results from security research rarely make it to the headlines. But there is no reason to be afraid or conerned about the "security" term: Many results in civil security research have contributed silently to protect us, providing the foundation for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth of our societies. Here are some examples from the work of the European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC):

A Multiple Input - Multiple Output (MIMO) Radar prototype MELISSA was originally developed  to detect landslides in the neighbouring Alp Mountains. It also was applied to take signatures from pedestrians by walking patterns, measuring up to 2000 times per second. When in early 2012 the big cruise ship Costa Concordia got stuck on a reef off Giglio Island in the Mediterranean, MELISSA proved highly valuable and was referred to as "to my understanding the best tool worldwide" by the highly renowned scientific co-ordinator of the measurement campaign.

Ultrasonic scanning can be applied to pre-natal diagnostics but is almost unknown  to verify the integrity of mechanical seals in nuclear installations. A patented metal seal that is composed of an inner part of a stack of rings with arbitrary incisions and an outer metal cover and can be scanned by ultrasound for its integrity has been developed in 2005. It was approved by the Internatona Atomic Energy Agency in 2008 and used in the Romanian Cernavoda plant to assist the nuclear inspectors of IAEA to verify the integrity of spent nuclear fuel containments.

Numerical modelling and heavy duty engineering come together in the European Laboratory for Structural Assessment (ELSA). The laboratory researches explosion impact on structures of central importance by numerically modelling and by a 200-meter underground large Hopkinson bar jamming concrete specimen in scientific tests. Although general results are published in scientific journals, some specific findings cannot be disclosed as they are related to vulnerabilities and impact on single targets. Safe construction standards in Europe and individual protection measures of train stations can be traced back to research in the ELSA laboratory.

Computational linguistics is a relatively young area of science that is used in automated information analysis from text and speech, being an important factor for rapid situation assessment after natural disasters, in civil war or in major incidents. This approach allows an automated alerting of more than 18.000 first responders all across the world by the Global Disaster Alert and Co-ordination System (GDACS) which is operated jointly by the European Commission's Joint Research Center and the UN.

Many of the security research areas also have their own technological beauty, stemming either from the size or from the complexity involved. This fact will become visible if you have the opportunity to visit some of the fascinating installations described above.