POLITIEZONE VAN ANTWERPEN

Their core work

Antwerp Police Department is one of Belgium's largest municipal police forces, responsible for law enforcement, public safety, and emergency response across the city of Antwerp. In EU research, they serve as an operational end-user and field-validation partner — bringing real policing requirements, testing environments, and practitioner feedback that technology developers and universities cannot supply on their own. Their H2020 contributions span immersive VR/AR tools for collaborative intelligence analysis and simulation-based preparedness training for cascading cyber-physical threats to critical infrastructure. They give research consortia the operational credibility needed to demonstrate that tools will actually work in a law enforcement context.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first project (INFINITY, 2020) placed them inside research on immersive VR/AR environments designed to help analysts process and visualize complex intelligence collaboratively — a tool-adoption and cognitive enhancement angle. By 2021, PRECINCT shifted the focus toward organizational-level preparedness: digital twins of infrastructure and serious games simulating cascading failure scenarios. The trajectory moves from equipping individual analysts with better visualization tools toward training entire response systems against complex, multi-domain threats.

They are moving from immersive analyst tools toward system-level preparedness simulation, suggesting future interest in digital twin-based training platforms and cyber-physical threat response exercises.

How they like to work

Antwerp Police participates exclusively as a consortium partner — never as coordinator — consistent with the end-user role typical of public authorities in security research. Their 62 unique partners across just 2 projects reflects participation in large, multi-stakeholder consortia (standard for EU security RIA and IA calls) rather than tight bilateral relationships. Working with them means gaining a credible operational validator, but expect them to contribute requirements, test scenarios, and feedback rather than technical development.

Despite only 2 projects, they are connected to 62 unique partners across 18 countries — a footprint driven by the large consortium structures common in EU security research programmes. Their network almost certainly includes technology SMEs, universities, defence research institutes, and other European law enforcement agencies.

What sets them apart

Few municipal police forces in Europe are active H2020 partners, which makes Antwerp Police a rare practitioner voice in security research consortia — one that carries weight with evaluators and end-user credibility that academic or industrial partners cannot replicate. As Belgium's largest city police force, they also represent a dense, complex urban policing environment that is highly representative for tools designed to scale across European cities. Consortium builders targeting Horizon Europe security calls will find them a credible and sought-after end-user partner.

Highlights from their portfolio

• INFINITY
  Largest funded project (EUR 245,160), focused on VR/AR collaborative intelligence environments — a frontier application that positions police as active adopters of immersive investigative technology.
• PRECINCT
  Addresses cascading cyber-physical threats to critical infrastructure using digital twins and serious games, reflecting a broadening from analyst tools to city-scale resilience preparedness.