Research Unit

Smart Solutions for Secure Societies

Acronym
i4S
Duration
09 February 2021 → Ongoing
Application area
Social Sciences and Humanities
Promotor-spokesperson
Business developer
Research disciplines
  • Natural sciences
    • Computer science
    • Machine learning and decision making
    • Computer system security
    • Cryptography, privacy and security
    • System software and middleware
    • Software engineering
    • Computational evolutionary biology, comparative genomics and population genomics
  • Social sciences
    • Business economics
    • Social epidemiology
    • Criminography and methods of criminological investigation
    • Private policing and security services
    • Safety, prevention and police
    • Criminal law
    • European law
    • Information law
    • Information technologies
  • Engineering and technology
    • Intelligent transportation systems
    • Smart cities
    • Interactive and intelligent systems
    • Bio-informatics
    • Cartography
    • Geospatial information systems
Description
i4S is a new multidisciplinary valorisation consortium that brings together the AUGent expertise from alpha, bèta and gamma disciplines on crime, security, technology, digitalisation and privacy. The consortium unites researchers from six faculties and eight departments of Ghent University and two colleges in their pursuit of "smart solutions for secure societies", thus representing 18 research groups, institutes and consortia with a total of more than 100 researchers. i4S is formed in response toand in anticipation of a large and rapidly growing crime and security market in which technology and digitalisation both pose a major challenge and offer an innovative solution. Digitalisation and the increasing availability of new technologies confront the public and private sectors with new and increasingly complex crime and security issues (e.g. cybercrime, terrorism, transnational organised crime, international economic crime). At the same time, digitalisation and new technologies offer previously unavailable opportunities to be better armed against crime and to guarantee security. i4S therefore supports the public and private sector in the development and implementation of innovative customised technological and digital solutions for crimeand security. In the pursuit of "smart solutions for secure societies", i4S always has the principle of "safeguarding privacy while enhancing security" in mind. Privacy by design is therefore an overarching principle for i4S and is ensured by the privacy expertise present within i4S. The (future) applications concern the security market in the broadest sense. They can be linked to different domains in the security market, such as private and public security (e.g. compliance industry, private security, law enforcement-authorities), IT and cyber security (e.g. software and telecommunications industry) and physical security (e.g. transport sector, medical sector and public authorities).