This document discusses opportunities and challenges related to big data and secure societies. It outlines the goals of the EU's Horizon 2020 Secure Societies program, which aims to enhance resilience against disasters and threats through new crisis management tools, forensic tools to fight crime and terrorism, improved border security, and enhanced cybersecurity. It also describes how big data from sources like satellite imagery, aerial imagery, and open sources can support EU decision-making, but presents challenges involving integrating and analyzing heterogeneous data at large scales while protecting privacy. Requirements include dealing with complex datasets, speeding up processing and visualization, guaranteeing timely and value-added products through data fusion, and developing algorithms for trend analysis.

1. BIG DATA &
SECURE SOCIETIES
Opportunities, Challenges and Requirements27/02/2015

2. H2020 Secure Societies
 Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens
o Undertaking the R&I activities needed to protect our citizens, society and economy as well as our
infrastructures and services, our prosperity, political stability and wellbeing.
 Primary aims of the Secure Societies Challenge:
o to enhance the resilience of our society against natural and man-made disasters, ranging from the
development of new crisis management tools to communication interoperability, and to develop
novel solutions for the protection of critical infrastructure;
o to fight crime and terrorism ranging from new forensic tools to protection against explosives;
o to improve border security, ranging from improved maritime border protection to supply
chain security and to support the Union's external security policies including through
conflict prevention and peace building;
o to provide enhanced cyber-security, ranging from secure information sharing to new assurance
models.

3. EU Satellite Centre
 Agency of the EU Council
 HQ in Torrejón de Ardoz (ES)
 Primary User of EO Satellite Data
 Foreseen role of Service Provider
To support the decision making and actions of the EU
in the field of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)
by providing products and services resulting from
the exploitation of relevant space assets and collateral data

4. Big Data Opportunities
 Existing datasets are very heterogeneous
o EO Satellite Data (e.g. VHR Satellite Imagery)
o Aerial imagery (e.g. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles)
o Data from Intelligence Sources (GEOINT, HUMINT, OSINT…)
 Rapidly increasing availability, precision and variety of data to
be analysed and used (e.g. in support of EU decision-making)
o Copernicus Sentinels, Commercial and Governmental EO Missions
o Long-term archives, in-situ data…
o Collateral sources (Media, Public data, Web-based communities,
user-generated content, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, publicly
available sources…)

5. Big Data Challenges (1)
 New capacities for the whole data lifecycle
o Integration of data, information and knowledge from different
sources
o Analysis of big amount of heterogeneous data
o Data Mining, Semantics, Ontologies…
o Visualization of results in an easy-understandable way
o Exploitation and preservation of historical data
o Data policies and methods for sensitivity issues (network and
information security, information sharing…)

6. Big Data Challenges (2)
 ICT provisioning (cloud computing, scalability, parallel
processing)
 Concepts evolution (VREs, collaborative platforms,
resource sharing, processing to the data…)
 Added-value has to be demonstrated to Stakeholders and
Users
 Protection of personal data and privacy preserving
 Financial constraints

7. Big Data Requirements (1)
 To deal with large and complex datasets maintaining or
improving the capacity 1) to extract in a timely manner, 2) to
use properly and 3) to visualize suitably relevant information
o To speed up data acquisition, access, exploring and
processing
o To integrate and analyse in a timely manner big amounts of
heterogeneous data
o To advance data visualization, dissemination and
exploitation

8. Big Data Requirements (2)
 To guarantee the provision of Timely, Reliable, Relevant,
Accurate and Value-Added products and services
o Fusion of multi-sources and multi-temporal series of data
o Ensuring compatibility of long and large series of
continuous data for multi-layer coverage
o Development of new algorithms for trend/pattern analysis
o Development of automated services to identify
anomalies/changes over selected areas of interest and
raise alerts

9. UNCLASSIFIED / FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
European Union Satellite Centre © 2015
Sergio Albani
RTDI Projects Coordinator
sergio.albani@satcen.europa.eu