Onsite Challenges stemming from megatrends are shifting the ground for security in the EU. This is true for each trend considered separately, but their mutual reinforcement and cascading effects accelerate the process and bring stronger impacts, making preparedness and response more complex.
Climate change and related extreme weather events will affect our ability to live as before. They will impact access to clean water, food and affordable energy, thereby creating scarcity and potentially triggering social unrest or displacement of population. At the same time, the real and digital worlds are increasingly intertwined, deeply impacting society at all levels, with an increased penetration of social media and algorithmically amplified information, and creating new opportunities for criminals.
Security authorities are facing a changing world, bringing both opportunities and challenges, that requires rethinking the capabilities needed to perform their missions. While the demand for critical raw materials is projected to increase drastically, geopolitical tensions and global competition generate risks for supply chains and may affect states` sovereignty, prosperity, safety, and security.
This cascading impact of megatrends demands a renewed debate on the role to be played, and contribution to be delivered, by EU security research.
The Exhibition will concretely support the SRE 2023 main theme and will be open through the 2 days of the event. Moreover, it will be enriched with small scale demos prepared by the selected projects.