Piraeus
Urban securityBeSecure-FeelSecure - Holistic Urban Security Governance Framework for Monitoring, Assessing and Forecasting the Efficiency, Sustainability and Resilience of Piraeus
Security is a major issue affecting the everyday lives of our citizens. Although Piraeus is a safe city, there is still (a lot of) room for improvement. This is why we capitalize on BeSecure-FeelSecure and undertake a series of innovative actions to further strengthen the feeling of security in our city. Our goal is, apart from prevention, to educate citizens to avoid difficult situations or face them in the best possible way. Our objective is to methodically draw on the available European funds, collaborate and exchange best practices with other European cities in order to provide the best possible services to our citizens.
Piraeus is the largest & busiest port in Greece, among the biggest European ports and the main hub connecting Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as among the most densely populated cities in Europe (15.065 citizens/km2).
The urban threat landscape in Piraeus is mainly comprised by small scale crime (i.e. pickpockets, thieves), night crime activities, drug & cigarettes smuggling and immigrants’ trafficking. These events are hardly reported to the authorities due to the lack of transparency, cross-sectoral cooperation and exploitation of cyber-physical flaws. The project targeted areas are characterized by an urban landscape with the following urban crime factors:
1. Low social cohesion
2. High population density
3. Sense of degradation
4. Fear of crime (citizens believe that urban insecurity is in the top 3 city problems according to a recent local poll).
5. Environmental degradation & urban design.
6. Weak collaboration among the critical information systems of the urban authority, the police and other key stakeholders is associated to the almost non-existent interoperability, entailing information losses and hampering timely reaction of the first responders.
The Be Secure-Feel Secure (BSFS) proposed solution aims to provide a holistic framework against urban security threats, focusing on crime prevention and improvement of the actual and perceived security. This can be achieved via efficient collaboration of key urban entities, infrastructures and the citizens, entailing seamless information sharing and increased social cohesion. In this line, BSFS will be implemented in three layers (governance, cyber and social & spatial actions). In the Governance layer, a Local Council for Crime Prevention (LCCP) will be established in the municipality of Piraeus, in order to promote collaborative decision making between the main urban stakeholders. LCCP will be comprised by representatives of the urban authority, police, criminology (scientific) experts and cyber-security (technical) experts.
These decision makers will be supported by the Cyber layer of the project, with the implementation of an Evidence-based Collaborative Urban Risk Management (CURiM) ICT platform. CURiM enables synergies among local stakeholders towards identifying, modeling, evaluation, forecasting and prevention of cyber/physical security threats.
The output of the collaboration between LCCP and CURiM will be the definition and implementation of specific Social & Spatial actions, following the approach of modern CPTED “Crime Prevention through Environmental Design”. These actions will be associated, inter alia, to the delivery of urban security awareness sessions to key citizen groups, beautification of selected abandoned or vandalized public property and victimization support.
Utterly, the BSFS project will deliver a governance framework and a collaborative urban security management platform in order to improve both the urban security landscape of Piraeus and increase its citizens’ perception of safety. Upon their evaluation, the project results will comprise a set of best practices, which will be communicated outside the local boundaries, so that they can be adoptable by other Greek and European cities.
- Municipality of Piraeus
- Panteion University of social and political sciences;
- University of Piraeus Research Center
- Ministry of Citizen Protection - national public authority
- SingularLogic - private enterprise
- SPACE Hellas SA - private enterprise
- 1 international organisation: European Forum for Urban Security
- Increased sense of perceived security across the citizens of Piraeus
- Improved urban security status especially in the most critical area of intervention
- Collaboration among the municipality, the local police and the citizens in terms of urban threats’ response will be strengthened, promoting also the trust levels of the citizens towards the local authorities
- The citizens of Piraeus will be motivated to engage with BSFS using the CURiM App, since they will be part of the urban security improvement of their city
- The adoption, deployment and proper use of CURiM by the Urban Authority and the citizens will entail the reduction of unreported crime, facilitating thus the work of the Piraeus Police
- The CPTED interventions foreseen to be performed in specific abandoned or degraded areas will transform them into safer and citizen-friendly locations
- The successful implementation along with the replication activities are expected to develop the BSFS Urban Security Framework, which will be ready to be adopted by every European city
March 2020: the LCCP is established in the Municipality of Piraeus
October 2020: Fear of crime and victimization report is available. From June 2020, a baseline survey will be conducted at the neighborhoods of the intervention areas in order to measure the actual fear of crime of the citizens. The improvement of these results will be assessed via a follow-up survey which will be conducted in 2022.
December 2020: the one-stop-shop victimization support unit is established
August 2021: The Collaborative Evidence-Driven Urban RIsk AssessMent (CURiM) System is up and running
September 2021: Major urban interventions have been completed
July 2022: Follow-up assessment survey is available.