PERSONA 1st Workshop
Towards a comprehensive method for impact assessment of
no-gate crossing technologies at European borders
Brussels, 26 June 2019
Vrije Universiteit Brussel – Institute for European Studies
Pleinlaan 5, 1050 Brussels
The purpose of this workshop is to present and gather feedback on the preliminary results of the EU funded research project PERSONA. PERSONA’s main goal is to design and establish a unified and tailored impact assessment method to appropriately evaluate the societal consequences of state-of-theart
border-controlling technologies and to ensure that these solutions meet the requirements and expectations of both, governments, including law enforcement authorities, and individuals crossing (external) European borders. The project’s consortium periodically seeks feedback by, inter alia,
organizing three workshops.
During the first workshop, the participants will attend two keynote speeches by experts in the area of ethics and technology. Two roundtables will follow, presenting the first results of the project with a view to seek feedback. The first roundtable will be on a set of defined use cases and field pilots which
will be assessed within the PERSONA project. To simplify, a use case is the detailed description (in a form of a storyline) of a specific no-gate crossing action that takes place in a given scenario (e.g. airport or open border); field pilots instead are small scale actual deployment of such use cases to test
them (e.g. simulating an airport border crossing points with volunteers). The second roundtable will be on the draft method of assessment to be used for these purposes. A discussion with the audience will follow.
This workshop provides an opportunity to meet with different stakeholders (e.g. law enforcement authorities, academics, technical experts) to get insights into the latest border-less crossing technologies and the methods to assess their impacts. Furthermore, it allows to be directly involved in the development of the project, by e.g. sharing key contributions.
Agenda
17:00 – 17:10: Welcome, chairperson’s opening remarks, short presentation of the project
Chairman: Simone Casiraghi, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
17:10 – 17:20: Keynote speech: The ethical border gate?
Prof. J. Peter Burgess, Ecole Normale Supérieure & Vrije Universiteit Brussel
17:20 – 17:30: Q&A with the keynote speaker
17:30 – 18:00: Roundtable I: PERSONA Findings on use cases and pilots
Moderator: Susanne Binder, Queen Mary University of London
Panel:
Dr. Dimitrios N. Gkritzapis, Hellenic Police Headquarters
Dr. Sebastian Weydner-Volkmann, University of Freiburg
Dr. Jörgen Ahlberg, Termisk Systemteknik AB
18:00 – 18:10: Discussion
18:10 – 18:40: Roundtable II: a draft of generic method for assessing impacts of initiatives on societal concerns
Moderator: Dariusz Kloza, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Panel:
Melanie Labour, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Prof. Dr. Ina Schiering, Ostfalia Univeristy of Applied Sciences
Katerina Demetzou, Radboud University, Nijmegen
Dr. Ledion Krisafi, Albanian Institute for International Studies
18:40 – 18:50: Discussion
18:50 – 19:00: Keynote speech: Analysis of non-intrusive intelligent border management systems and on-the-fly biometric machine intelligence
Dr. Krishna Chandramouli, Venaka Media Limited
19:00 – 19:10: Q&A with the keynote speaker
19:10 – 19:15: Chairman’s closing remarks
19:15 – 19:45: Reception drinks
The language of the event will be English.
Participation is free of charge, yet – due to limited number of places, registration is required. Please register by sending an e-mail to Ioulia.Konstantinou@vub.be prior to 14 June 2019.
A draft working paper will be distributed among registered participants shortly before the event.
The workshop is co-organised by VUB, CEL and QMUL, and held in conjunction with the 4th Summer School of the Brussels Privacy Hub.
