The primary aims of the Secure Societies Challenge are:
- 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;
- to fight crime and terrorism ranging from new forensic tools to protection against explosives;
- 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;
- and to provide enhanced cyber-security, ranging from secure information sharing to new assurance models
The Commission's R&D support for the sector is carried out via annual calls for security research topics, with one call launched each year, usually around March.
Research topics aim to support the EU's security priorities. They give rise to projects lasting anywhere from one to four years.
Grants vary from modest amounts for academic inquiry and studies to large-scale technology demonstration projects with budgets of EUR 20 million or more. The security research programme will disburse more during the second half of its budgetary period to correspond with the larger-scale projects that are taking off during that time.