19.30 hrs - 22.00 hrs - Dinner Debate on Safety and Security
Location - Members’ Restaurant, European Parliament, Brussels
(at invitation only)
Description
Citizens around the globe consider safety and security to be of increasing importance as the world finds itself in more and more complex, regional and political turmoil and in armed conflict. Globalisation, global migration and the impact of new technologies with a global reach make safety and security an even more pressing theme. Hence, better insight into safety and security are top priorities for the European Union. This requires fundamental and applied research.
European Members of Parliament as well as Europe’s national and EU policy makers require to maintain an open dialogue with researchers, scientists and engineers on safety, security and stability within the EU and beyond. Research, analysis and tools support EU policies on, for example, border security, including maritime borders, the fight against organised crime and corruption. The implementation of safety and security measures against possible biological, chemical and explosive unintentional or deliberately induced losses also represents a EU top-priority.
Modelling, simulation and response capabilities are studied to enhance the resilience of physical infrastructures from a safety as well as a security perspective, and to prevent or respond to cybercrime.
Themes and questions for debate
- Europe has arrived at a crossroads in terms of security and safety.
- What are the right policies at EU and Member State level to ensure a safe, secure and sustainable European society and legal order?
- What are the priorities, the “must haves”, with respect to safety and security tools, technology, approaches?
- What can European research in its widest sense contribute to address these priorities successfully?
- Is Europe doing the right research at the right time and how can we ensure impact of this research?
- Is there enough collaboration between research institutions within Europe to attain the safety and security ambitions and goals?
- What about safety and security education: is it adequate for the challenges of today’s world?
- Is the EU Commission able to address the challenges by appropriate policy initiatives together with the Member States of the Union?
Debate will be organised per thematic roundtable, 7 tables in total.
Speakers
Host:
Othmar Karas - Member of European Parliament
Moderator:
Karel Luyben - Rector Magnificus Delft University of
Technology
Speakers per thematic table:
Fabian Amtenbrink - Professor in International and European Law and Vice Dean
Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Bibi van den Berg - Associate professor in Cybersecurity, Leiden University
Edwin Bakker - Professor in Terrorism and Counterterrorism, Leiden University
Jan van den Berg - Professor in Cybersecurity, Delft University of Technology
Genserik Reniers - Professor in Safety of Hazardous Materials, Delft University of
Technology
Margreet Vos - Professor in Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology,
Erasmus Medical Centre
Rob Zuidwijk - Professor in Ports in Global Networks, Erasmus University
Rotterdam
Yao-hua Tan - Professor in Information and Communication Technology,
Delft University of Technology
Pieter van Gelder - Professor in Safety Science, Delft University of Technology
On behalf of the Executive Boards of Leiden University and Erasmus University Rotterdam:
Carel Stolker - Rector Magnificus and President of Leiden University
Huibert Pols - Rector Magnificus of Erasmus University Rotterdam
Event scenario
Overview of the themes
Theme Safety and security of economic welfare in Europe
Introduction: Fabian Amtenbrink, Professor of European Union Law, Erasmus University
Rotterdam and Scientific Director of the European Research Centre for
Economic and Financial Governance (EURO-CEFG)
In the course of the most recent economic and financial crisis the vicious circle between banks and the sovereigns turned out to be the main cause for instabilities and insecurities for the European economies. As a reaction the Union legislator established the established ‘Banking Union’ with the ‘Single Supervisory Mechanism’ located at the European Central Bank and with the ‘Single Resolution Mechanism’ including a ‘Single Resolution Fund’. Now the questions arises whether those measures were sufficient in order to prevent future financial and economic crises and, by that, future threats to the security and safety of the economic welfare in Europe. The table will address these issues and discuss future developments and reforms in order to protect the economic welfare in Europe.
Theme Cyber Security
Introduction: Jan van den Berg, Professor in Cyber Security, Delft University of Technology
Despite the growing attention paid to cyber security, we are startled by new cyber incidents on an almost daily basis. An important condition for a genuine improvement of this unpleasant phenomenon is getting improved (local and global) cyber situational awareness. This relates to better insight in (upcoming) cyber threats/attacks as executed by all kinds of cyber actors (e.g., in the dark web), increased insight in Internet traffic patterns, in anomalous behavior of computer processes (e.g., related to financial transactions), in computer systems' vulnerabilities as exploited in previous and possibly future incidents, among others. It is clear that a better overall picture of what's going on in cyberspace can only be achieved by effective (big) data & information sharing between all kinds of stakeholders, which also poses a lot of dilemma's related to, e.g., security versus privacy, transparency versus reputation loss, security costs versus benefits. Scientific studies using various scientific approaches are needed related to these cyber security challenges. Topics to put on the research agenda include computer sciencestudies (e.g., on cyberspace monitoring & analytics, development of an ontology of key cyber & cyber subdomains/critical infrastructures terms, effective detection of software zerodays and of vulnerabilities in SCADA systems), institutional economics studies (e.g., on the design of incentive structures for cooperation between cyber security actors, design of national and international cyber governance institutions), law studies (e.g., on rights and duties of cyber stakeholders, on rules & regulations on law enforcement, cyber warfare, and international cyber security cooperation), and ethics studies (e.g., on balancing privacy and security, and on privacy and big data). The outcomes of this studies will provide decision support for relevant cyber security actors and politicians in order to create a safer cyberspace.
Theme Governance of Security
Introduction: Bibi van den Berg, Associate professor of Law and Digital Technologies,
Leiden University and member of the Dutch Cyber Security Council and
Edwin Bakker, Professor in Terrorism and Counterterrorism, Leiden University and
Director of Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism
The internet has become a critical system in our economic and social lives. Due to its open and flat character is has grown to be the number one enabling technology of our time in only a few decades time, reaching a global character and connecting people all over the world. The same factors that were at the root of the internet’s success, however, at the same time raise important questions for governance, regulation and law enforcement. Because of its global reach the internet knows no borders. This clashes with the ways in which we have traditionally organised governance and law and regulations in the physical world, viz. mostly along territorial lines. Whose laws apply in cyberspace? Who gets to rule this global domain? And what legitimations do states and non-state actors (e.g. companies) have to claim control over this domain? A related issue is that of jurisdiction and attribution. Due to its flat and open character it is relatively easy for individuals with bad intentions to commit criminal acts and remain anonymous, even from the other side of the world. Anonimity and the network character of the internet make it very difficult to track and trace perpetrators, let alone arrest them and get them extradited. With the rise of the importance of the internet as a vital system in our everyday lives, however, it is paramount that we find ways in which to overcome these thorny issues. One of the key obstacles in the area of cybersecurity governance and regulation is a lack of clarity at the conceptual level: we use concepts such as ‘cyber warfare’, ‘cyber terrorism’ and ‘cyber espionage’ to distinguish between different types of cyber security threats, but it is very difficult to make clear distinctions between these categories, both theoretically and practically. This is a point of concern, because we cannot develop adequate protections and responses (laws, regulations, policies) if we cannot pinpoint the problems we are seeking to solve. There is a clear role for the EU to make steps in taking the governance and regulation of the internet forward, to ensure a safer internet for citizens, organisations and businesses.
Theme Chemical Safety and Security
Introduction: Genserik Reniers, Professor of Safety of Hazardous Materials, Delft University of
Technology and Scientific Director of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre of
Safety and Security
Multiple concerns arise in modern societies, namely increasing technological complexity, challenges of a global market, rising frequency of severe natural events and increasing societal vulnerability. The impacts on the population of such combination of new threats and hazards is potentially amplified by the strong multi-sectorial dependence of specific critical infrastructures. Chemical industrial parks, also called Seveso sites in Europe, store or process high quantities of hazardous substances. The involvement of Seveso sites/areas in crisis scenarios may escalate the impact of cascading events, either deriving from external threats as natural hazards or intentional interference (terrorist attacks), or by internal causes.
Population and safety and security officers need an increased awareness of the potential impact deriving from such scenarios. Seveso sites have specific factors for the prevention of scenarios, as well as factors that influence resilience and response to crisis.
The scope of conventional approaches to the safety and security of complex systems needs to be widened to include the specific scenarios involving Seveso sites/areas. The consolidated approach and tools available for the assessment of the impact of major accidents at Seveso sites, developed to address hazards as required by the Seveso Directive, needs to be revisited and integrated in a holistic assessment of external and internal threats. Consequence and impact assessment should be extended to consider cascading events that, through multi-sectorial dependencies and indirect impacts, may affect different entities of the society. Awareness needs to be created among population and safety and security managers of chemical parks.
Theme Microbial safety in health care
Introduction: Margreet Vos, Professor in Medical Microbiology, Infection Prevention,
Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam
With increasing antimicrobial resistance in micro-organism the future will be quite different in respect to infectious diseases; the future patients will be older, more (immuno)-compromised with complex underlying diseases and as a result get more frequent and complex invasive procedures and antibiotic treatments. People are travelling more frequently and patients will be increasingly asked to get their treatment in different health care centers or even abroad due to insurance company policies and the free market principle. Infectious diseases are different from other diseases, because microorganisms always transmit to other persons or the environment. Therefore, infectious diseases are not just about the infected person, but involves by transmission the threat to others as well. Resistant microorganisms lead to difficult to treat infections. As different European countries has different infection prevention policies and therefore different numbers of infections by resistant microorganisms, for low incidence countries the future will bring an increase of the risk on resistant microorganisms. If we do not prevent these resistant microorganism in and between different countries, we all will end up in the pre-antibiotic era.
To prevent this, a few questions should be addressed:
- What are the sources and reservoirs of highly resistant microorganisms (HRMO) and how can we prevent these HRMO entering the human field from the animal field, passing the country borders and entering health care institutes. How can we improve antibiotic stewardship in the human and animal field and prevent transmission in health care centers to keep the chance on infection low.
Call for action: As microorganisms travel with persons and transmit to others, we all (countries, communities and centers) have a responsibility in sending and receiving microorganisms to and from each other.
- To optimize the right and timely prevention measures, how can we keep each other informed about known HRMO-infected patients when patients are moving between health care centers and ambulant care, keeping in mind the privacy of the patients and their data. Is sharing between caregivers of information about carriers of resistant microorganism more important than the individual right on privacy?
Call or action: How to overcome these privacy issues on selected patient data.
- How should we design and build healthcare buildings which are optimized for a clean and safe healthcare environment. Can this knowledge ultimately lead to European guidelines on microbial safe health care buildings?
Theme Secure Ports and Trade Lanes
Introduction: Rob Zuidwijk, Professor of Ports in Global Networks, Erasmus University
Rotterdam and Scientific Director Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre Metropolis and
Mainport and Yao-hua Tan, Professor in Information and Communication Technology,
Delft University of Technology
The Leiden, Delft, and Erasmus Universities have joined forces in the Centre Metropolis & Mainport, where the focus is on the following themes: (1) Sustainability; (2) Synchromodality; (3) World Port City; and (4) Secure International Trade and Global Clusters.
The fourth theme puts forward the following two questions:
- How to ensure secure trade lanes by means of data pipelines, e.g. cloud-based IT networks for data/message exchange, that support supply chain management and trade facilitation?
- What is the role of the various stakeholders in supporting secure ports and trade lanes? What are synergies and trade-offs?
One of the LDE initiatives is the Executive Master on Customs and Supply Chain Compliance. Students involved in the program are tax and customs officials, from border inspection agencies as well as industry that engage in compliance issues. The above questions play a very important role in the program and in a number of EU projects in which LDE researchers have been involved (INTEGRITY, CASSANDRA, CORE, ITAIDE).
We invite stakeholders involved in securing ports and trade lanes both from industry and border inspection agencies to engage in discussing questions as the above.
Theme Safety and Security in Critical Infrastructures
Introduction: Pieter van Gelder, Professor in Safety and Security Science,
Delft University of Technology
We live in a world of new technology; robotics, internet of things, wireless data via wearables, remote sensing from space, UAV’s, social media and citizen participation for massive data collection, etc. At the same time we are being threatened by natural hazards, climate change, changing land use, security threats, cascading effects, etc. We can monitor flood disasters from satellites and update flood propagation models with social media messages from the public. We can measure ground accelerations via public participation with the xyz sensors of our smartphones, enriching instrumental data of seismologists. We can inform citizens during crises with geo-based text messaging, giving them much more information what to do, than old-fashioned sirens. Community policing via apps is possible to aid law enforcement with local residents. Our vision is that an integral, big-data based and multidisciplinary scientific approach, in a broader socio-technical context, incorporating technical, human and organizational factors, covering the full safety chain of proaction, prevention, preparation, repression and after care, as well as covering the full life cycle of plan, design, build, operate, maintain, dispose / reuse, can increase the overall safety, reliability and security of our critical infrastructures and as society as a whole. Empirical studies are needed to support this vision and to advise decision makers how to optimally use the abundance of various sources of data with the goal to increase safety and security. EU wide databases should be set up to collect data from large numbers of case studies, so that learning and evidence-based decision making becomes possible. Incentives should be developed to stimulate further public and private partnerships and to prevent possible negative influences of the big data trend.