On February 17, 2026, TESSERA successfully hosted its second online technical workshop “Consolidating progress: Laying the groundwork for datasets towards the European Security Data Space for Innovation”. The three-hour event brought together more than 60 experts and professionals from EU-funded security projects across the domains of Fighting Crime and Terrorism, Border Management, Resilient Infrastructure, and Disaster-Resilient Societies. Participants included representatives from technology providers, research and academic institutions, industry, SMEs, and security practitioners.

The workshop opened with an overview of TESSERA’s progress to date, its objectives, and the roadmap ahead. This was followed by a session on the European Data Space landscape, providing insights into the architecture and conceptual governance framework of the European Security Data Space for Innovation (EU SDSI). The discussion highlighted foundational principles, governance models and architectural perspectives shaping the EU SDSI, with particular emphasis on trusted identity mechanisms and policy-driven access control aligned with EU regulatory requirements.

Next, an overview of thirteen operational use cases identified within TESSERA was presented, covering the thematic pillar of Civil Security for Society and the associated AI and data-driven technologies supporting relevant operational tasks and enabling security-oriented dataset mapping. A central focus of the workshop was the advancement from dataset mapping to data standardisation, including an overview of the proposed extension of the DCAT-AP (Data Catalog Vocabulary Application Profile) model to enable the harmonised description of datasets across the EU SDSI ecosystem. The discussion also addressed dataset quality assessment and regulatory compliance verification, introducing proposed safety checks spanning the full data lifecycle within EU SDSI.

In addition, the workshop shared insights and lessons learned from the first TESSERA online workshop based on feedback gathered through a post-event questionnaire. Key challenges identified included data privacy, legal frameworks, standardisation, and resources for data sharing. Following the event, a structured questionnaire was circulated to participants to collect further feedback and capture additional expert insights. This input will inform and refine TESSERA’s final developments, ensuring that its outcomes are closely aligned with the expectations of the security research and innovation community.

Overall, the second TESSERA online workshop strengthened the foundations of a trusted, user-driven, and innovation-oriented European Security Data Space, while reinforcing cross-project collaboration. The project team extends its sincere thanks to all participants for their engagement and valuable contributions, and looks forward to continued collaboration in the final phase of the project.