GRACE aims to equip European law enforcement agencies with advanced analytical and investigative capabilities to respond to the spread of online child sexual exploitation material.
GRACE - Global Response Against Child Exploitation
Why GRACE?
The growth in online child sexual exploitation and abuse material is a significant challenge for European law enforcement agencies. Referrals of CSEM exceed the capacity of LEAs to respond in a practical and timely manner. To safeguard victims, prosecute offenders and limit the spread of CSEM, LEAs need a next-generation AI-powered investigative platform.
Vision for GRACE
Address CSEM referrals
Provide a scalable and validated route to directly address the growing backlog of CSEM referrals from online service providers to EU Member State LEAs.
Deploy a federated-learning infrastructure
Implement a secure and privacy-aware, federated learning infrastructure for beyond state-of-the-art content classification within CSEM across Europe.
Automate the analysis of CSEM content
Deliver a semi-automated CSEM content analysis and prioritisation mechanism that enables LEAs to better safeguard victims and apprehend offenders.
Track trends in online CSEM
Facilitate LEAs’ ability to track short and long-term trends in the production, dissemination and consumption of online CSEM to inform preventive strategies and policy decisions.
Project Details
The core ambition for GRACE is to provide a European-wide platform that equips LEAs with advanced digital and analytical tools. GRACE aims to achieve significant operational value for LEAs through improving the investigative capabilities and responses to combatting online CSEM.
Consortium Partners
The GRACE consortium brings together a set of organisations with the expertise to address the topic of online child sexual exploitation. The project responds to the EC H2020 call SU-FCT-02-2019 [Sub Topic 2: Digital forensics in the context of criminal investigations].
The composition of the consortium is driven equally by the needs of the law enforcement community and by applied research opportunities in CSEM. Particularly, the current availability of ICT technologies to address the problem of exponential growth in the distribution of CSEM and the associated investigative challenges faced by Member State LEAs.
GRACE includes partners from 14 Member States, with a broad geographic spread, that will drive basic and applied research. GRACE promotes the goal of technology transfer to end-users, who will motivate and define the requirements and outcomes of the project.
Deliverables and Outputs
Below is an overview of the GRACE public deliverables and outputs, clearly stating the type, date of production, the entities responsible and the intended dissemination.
