M4D Group, as the Scientific & Technical Manager of AINATURE Project, participated in the second PSC/Plenary meeting of AINATURE, hosted by AGGRA, on 19-20 of March 2025, in Zadar, Croatia. During the meeting CERTH and UNIVPM presented the deliverables that were prepared and submitted during the 1st reporting period, until February 2025. presented the deliverables prepared and submitted during the 1st reporting period, until February 2025. This section was followed by the presentation of the forthcoming deliverables for the 2nd reporting period, due in August 2025. An extensive analysis of the reporting process was presented, supported by visual paradigms. The meeting included also a visit to the associate partner, i.e. the Firefighters Association of Zadar County, where the partners had the opportunity to view the equipment of the volunteer firefighters of Zadar, the services and premises and discuss the cases, risks and dangers they have to address, related to AINATURE. An analytical time-plan of the forthcoming actions and planning of next meetings was finally agreed among partners.

Participation of M4D Team to CERIS Workshop on Missing Persons On the 19th of March 2025, the Community for European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) organised a thematic workshop on the issue of Missing Persons. The event was hosted by DG HOME in Brussels and brought together a wide range of participants across different disciplines ranging from social sciences and humanities to information technologies, including representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), research/academia, industry, law enforcement, as well as members of the public, to thoroughly address the prevention of and the challenges stemming from people going missing, exploring in parallel innovative solutions and relevant responses. The workshop started with a welcome speech by the Director, Innovation & Audit Directorate, DG HOME, and an invited speech by the President of the Police Network of Missing Persons (PEN-MP) who provided an overview of the pressing and multifaceted issue of missing persons cases. She underlined in particular the need for cross-border collaboration, highlighting in parallel the aims and objectives of PEN-MP, the European police network where police experts from over 34 EU and non-EU countries come together, sharing their expertise on investigations on missing persons cases. These introductory speeches were followed by the first panel of the workshop on “Missing persons: exploring the phenomenon, including trends and challenges”, where experts from DG Home, law enforcement agencies, NGOs and public authorities shared their views on the nature and scale of the phenomenon, the potential links to other relevant criminal activities (human trafficking, smuggling, domestic violence, child sexual exploitation, etc.), as well as existing processes and methodologies in missing persons investigations. The second panel of the workshop on “Technology and methodologies in the search for missing persons and the role of research and innovation” provided an overview of the current methodologies, AI-powered tools and technologies, along with their innovative role in modern missing persons investigations, highlighting also the legal and ethical challenges associated with such tools, along with the necessary safeguards to prevent any type of discrimination. Finally, the third panel on “The role of NGOs and the public in the search for missing persons” highlighted the critical role of NGOs in addressing missing persons cases, identifying in parallel the risk indicators as well as the barriers that have to be addressed for a well-rounded prevention. In between these panels, demonstrations of cutting-edge technologies developed in four different EU-funded projects (HORIZON Europe projects VANGUARD and HEROES, ISF project CESAGRAM, and Amber Alert’s International Cold Cases Analysis project) took place, showcasing AI-driven tools and methodologies that can be utilised to support missing persons investigations.   The main key-takeaways of this CERIS workshop have been the need to support knowledge sharing, best practice exchanges, and a collaboration platform among stakeholders on this field, to explore technological advancements in addressing missing persons cases, as well as to further invest in social research and common databases to enhance prevention, search, and investigation efforts, not only across Europe, but also worldwide. The M4D group of the MKLab at CERTH/ITI successfully participated in this event, actively contributing to the second panel of the workshop on the technological advancements in missing persons’ investigations, providing insights on the legal and ethical implications on the development of relevant AI tools, as well as on the need to infuse social research findings in technological developments, ensuring in parallel further enhancement of the existing intelligence picture in the field, as well as building a common understanding and awareness on the phenomenon. Moreover, M4D researchers demonstrated the AI-based tools developed in the CESAGRAM project where M4D participated as Work Package leader, as well as the AI-based tools being developed in the VANGUARD project, coordinated by M4D, highlighting their role for supporting investigations, improving decision making, as well as providing actionable intelligence through multimodal data fusion, correlation, pattern recognition, predictive analytics, and risk assessment.

Μ4D Group participated in The Video Retrieval Competition 2024, with the VERGE system, an interactive video content retrieval system designed for browsing a collection of images extracted from videos and conducting targeted content searches. VERGE incorporates a variety of retrieval methods and fusion techniques. It also offers a user-friendly web application for query formulation and displaying top results. VBS is an international video content search competition that evaluates the state-of-the-art of interactive video retrieval systems. It is performed annually as a special session at the International Conference on MultiMedia Modeling (MMM) since 2012. The competition aims to push research on large-scale video retrieval systems that are effective, fast, and easy to use for content search scenarios that are truly relevant in practice (e.g., known-item search in an ever-increasing video archive, as nowadays ubiquitous in many domains of our digital world). Οur team ranked 5th in the Novice Session, 8th in the Expert Session and 7th overall among 16 participating teams. You can read the Paper and visit the official website for more information. Pic.1. M4D Team During the Competition

The submission deadline for the Special Issue on “Image Processing and Computer Vision Sensing Technologies in Engineering Applications and Digital Twins” has been extended until the 30th of June 2025!   Click for more information.

MaaSAI project, coordinated by M4D Group, aims to revolutionise manufacturing and remanufacturing processes by facilitating access to flexible and decentralised capacities, through the Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS) business model, that extends the principles of the service-oriented economy to the manufacturing industry. MaaSAI aims to reduce the heavy investments that manufacturers have traditionally had to make to set up and maintain their operations. With an emphasis on production flexibility, agility and responsiveness, the MaaSAI project enables on-demand manufacturing, reducing waste and optimising resource utilisation, facilitating the transition towards more sustainable and circular facilities, and promoting better integration of the value chain. The MaaSAI project leverages Explainable Artificial Intelligence (xAI) in autonomous agents to negotiate the use of manufacturing capacities between providers and consumers in a dynamic MaaS ecosystem. The incorporation of secure and real-time data exchange between participating companies ensures fast response times and improves collaboration. The kick-off meeting of the MaaSAI project took place on 18 & 19 of December 2024, at the facilities of CERTH. MaaSAI Consortium at CERTH Premices

The event was successfully held on Friday, September 27th at the Thessaloniki Concert Hall. Many educational organizations and institutes participated while M4D Group made a strong presence at the Researchers’ Night in Greece! The team brought the colors of tradition with them! The Project Chromata (ΧΡΩΜΑΤΑ) shared a new perspective on the preservation and reuse of our traditional values, through a digital world where cultural heritage is transcribed and projected through 3D virtual spaces. The platform combines artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and computer vision techniques to create virtual environments. Through the 3D virtual spaces of the platform, the visitors explored a new digital world where the cultural heritage is transcribed and displayed traditional customs, such as the “Anastenaria”, the “Kodonofori” and the Thracian wedding. We put on our VR glasses and transformed into inspectors in the Law Game Project. A complete gamified training system for Law Enforcement Agencies to assist them in developing core competencies required for intelligence crime analysis and illegal acts prediction. The system uses the latest advances in Virtual Reality Gaming, Artificial Intelligence, Human Modelling, Emotional Intelligence in Human-Artificial Agent Interaction, Social and Secure Cloud Systems. CDXi Solutions, a spin-off by M4D Group, demonstrated the PathoSAT solution. PathoSAT is a water quality monitoring system which offers an efficient system that utilizes multispectral satellite data and enables regular monitoring of inland water bodies. Satellite data ensures water purity and provides alerts when concentrations exceed normal levels. Visitors participated in a simulation of the process through a camera that monitored a tank of water, detecting contaminants on its surface. We walked through all the dimensions of the construction sector with the ASHVIN Project! An automated system for vision-based 3D inspection for maintenance activities, integrated into a VR environment. Users could remotely navigate the space and identify detected defects in real time. The highlight of the night was our little visitors breaking the dance floor!

EDITED POST We are very excited that this year, the M4D Group of ITI-CERTH will play a leading role in the Core Organizing Group of the RISE-SD 2024 Symposium, which will be held on October 16-17 in Chalkidiki, Greece. Ηaving a leading role in multiple R&D European Projects, we support the research and development in the security sector. The “Research and Innovation Symposium for European Security and Defense 2024” (RISE-SD 2024) is a European Research and Innovation event focused on presenting and demonstrating technologies, frameworks, methodologies and results of EU R&D projects beneficial to end-users in the field of Fighting Crime and Terrorism, Disaster and Crisis Management, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Cybersecurity and Border Management Research among others. Furthermore, Panels & Workshops will be led by experts, EC officers and representatives of R&D projects will be organised focused on specific security and civil protection issues such as the resilience of critical entities, fight against crime etc. What’s more, Speaker Talks by invited speakers and lectures will open the respective sessions of the RISE-SD 2024. Don’t miss the opportunity to join the symposium and be part of the conversation! Stay tuned and register here: https://rise-sd2024.eu Looking forward to seeing you in Chalkidiki! EDITED POST

We are proud to announce that TESTUDO project, coordinated by the M4D Group, has become a member of the European Cluster for Securing Critical Infrastructures (ECSCI). The main objective of the cluster is to create synergies and foster emerging disruptive solutions to security issues via cross-projects collaboration and innovation. TESTUDO project will contribute to the Read More...

On 26-27 of March, M4D/MKLab/ ITI-CERTH Group researchers Konstantinos Karystinakis and Ilias Gialampoukidis participated in the Water market Europe and presented the project Climempower as the latest research of the group in the domains of climate resilience and climate adaptation. ClimEmpower aims to bring together 14 organizations with a common mission to empower five South-European Read More...

The M4D/MKLab-ITI-CERTH team successfully participated in the 1st Robotic and Automation Expo held in Athens, Greece from April 12th to 14th, representing CERTH alongside ITI Robotics Lab. Throughout the three-day event, M4D researchers showcased the successful outcomes of various ongoing and concluded EU-Horizon Research and Innovation projects, including ASHVIN, ISOLA, LAW GAME, and DIH^2. In Read More...