23.2.2023
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
L 58/1403 COMMISSION PILOT PROJECTS
CHAPTER PP 01 — RESEARCH AND INNOVATION (cont'd) PP 01 23
(cont'd)
PP 01 23 04
(cont'd) — seamless integration with www.missingchildrenukraine.eu website in 3 languages (EN, UA, RU), including the reporting form for (receiving) new cases and a function to post publicity appeals in the form of online posters on worrying cross border cases of missing children; — the automatic creation of printed posters for publicity appeals.
Additionally, in the framework of the proposed pilot project, two more tools will be developed: — private mobile applications (for Android and iOS) for easy access and control of the Missing Children Tracker platform by mobile device, providing to authorised users of the official response organisations, all around Europe, direct push notifications for incidents/ updates related to missing children cases which, based on information and/ or the result of the intelligent matching algorithms of the platform, could be located in their countries. — an intelligent bot (also based on A.I.) especially designed for social media through which new missing children cases could be reported by Ukrainian families.
Facebook Messenger is currently the main method of communication used by Ukrainian citizens for getting in touch with the Ukrainian missing children response organisation.
The whole process for reporting a case is based just on the exchange of messages, supported by a few volunteers who are experiencing difficulties to fully handle the tons of information regarding missing children cases received via Messenger.
The scope of the bot is to automate the whole process for reporting a disappearance, to ask and get answers to specific questions in an intelligent manner and to create new cases in the database linked to any available evidences (pictures, legal documents etc), allowing the Ukrainian case managers to focus on managing the cases instead of entering and comparing data received through chat.
The proposed pilot will not only have an immediate positive impact on Ukrainian humanitarian crisis but can also set the basis for all missing children organisations under the umbrella of Missing Children Europe, to be prepared for any future multi-national emergency of similar size and nature.
Moreover, the case management procedures and tools to be put in place for Ukrainian unaccompanied minors in the framework of the proposed pilot project, could easily in the future be extended to all unaccompanied minors missing in the Union as we know that over 18 000 minors went missing between 2018 and 2021 and more and more of them are also reported to the 116000 network (European Hotline for Missing Children) across Europe.
The results of this pilot can be of assistance in similar events for a great number of Member States, and for organisations searching for missing refugee children across Europe and also to connect and protect children or even women/mothers by alerting of their safe position/location periodically.
There will be an added possibility for the app to be used as a mothers/women safe button.
1.
This pilot project can build on the success of the Childrescue project, which runs a specific database of missing children cases (both active and past), keeping information and detailed data per case, as well as of an intelligent tool able to classify (based on the analysis of the available data of every active case and intelligent pattern matching with past cases taking advantage of Machine Learning models) the disappearance of a child, e.g. runaway/thrownaway, nonfamily abduction, family abduction, custodial interference, lost and involuntarily missing.
The Childrescue platform can be customized, enhanced and upgraded to be up and running to handle the cases of missing children as a result of the war in Ukraine.