FOCUS

FOCUS will allow designing European security research to effectively cope with future EU roles responding to tomorrow’s challenges resulting from the globalization of risks, threats and vulnerabilities. It will do so through the elaboration of multiple scenarios based on IT-supported foresight in the form of alternative futures that are plausibility-probed and not just threat scenarios. FOCUS will design and apply an “embedded scenario” integrating method, delineating options for future tracks and broadened concepts of security research within context scenarios for EU roles to respond to transversal challenges (whose causes are exogenous, but whose consequences will be experienced within the EU). This will be performed along five big themes: 1) different tracks of a comprehensive approach as followed by European institutions, Member States and international strategic actors, particularly including linkages between the internal and external dimension of security; 2) natural disasters and environment-related hazards, focused on comprehensive risk reduction, civil protection and reconstruction; 3) critical infrastructure and supply chain protection, centred on preventing and responding to malicious attacks on EU citizens and utilities abroad as well as to meet threats before they reach the EU or affect the supply chain; 4) the EU as a global actor based on the wider Petersberg Tasks, building on EU and member states instruments and capability processes; 5) the evolution of the EU’s internal framework and prerequisites for delivering a comprehensive approach, including Lisbon treaty provisions and relevant strategies (e.g. for engagement with other international actors) as well as ethical acceptability and public acceptance. FOCUS will deliver (a) an IT Platform with tools and infrastructure for designing, applying, evaluating and managing scenarios for research planning, (b) populated with scenarios and analyses; (c) a roadmap with new tracks for security research.