Sustainable & Resilient Societies
The Sustainable and Resilient Societies research program develops AI-driven solutions to anticipate and mitigate global disruptions, from adverse climatic events to geopolitical crises. By analyzing complex data from diverse sources, such as images, speech, and text, our research predicts risks and informs evidence-based mitigation strategies. We design energy-efficient AI systems that optimize data acquisition and sensing, enabling deployment on low-cost sensors and embedded devices considering together the economic, environmental and societal pillars of sustainability. Our work also combats disinformation through adaptive models that synthesize and verify evidence in real time.
Through collaboration across computer science, physics, political science, and law, we analyze harmful processes and anticipate their evolution and stability. Validated on real-world challenges, from geopolitical risk assessment to resource optimization and critical infrastructure protection, our research delivers scalable, impactful solutions for more resilient societies.
Application domains
- Disinformation Detection & Mitigation
- Privacy-Preserving Technologies
- Smart Cities, Energy Efficiency, Sustainability & Urban Comfort
- Risk Prediction & Information Systems
- Decision Support for Governance & Public Services
Expertise domains
- Bio Informatics & Health Informatics
- Data Science & Social Computing
- Human Computer Interaction
- Imaging & Computer Vision
- Machine Learning
- Natural Language Processing
- Robotics & Autonomous Systems
- Security & Privacy
- Signal Processing
- Speech & Audio Processing
This program contributes to the following UN SDG
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People
ABBET, Philip
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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AGRAWAL, Sanat (Kumar)
(Research Intern)
AL AMINE, Zeina
(Research Intern)
ALMOMANI, Ahmad Qasim Mohammad
(Research Intern)
ALONSO DEL BARRIO, David
(Research and Development Engineer)
BEN MAHMOUD, Imen
(Research and Development Engineer)
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BHATTACHARJEE, Sushil (Kumar)
(Research Associate)
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BISOGNO BERNARDINI, Leonardo (Andrea)
(Research Intern)
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BOGHETTI, Roberto
(Research Intern)
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BORNET, Olivier
(Head of Research and Development Team)
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BURDISSO, Sergio (Gastón)
(Research Associate)
CANÉVET, Olivier
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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CARRON, Daniel
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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CLIVAZ, Guillaume
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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COLBOIS, Laurent
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
DAYER, Yannick (Nicolas)
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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DROZ, William
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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ECABERT, Christophe
(Research Associate)
EL HAJAL, Karl
(Doctoral Researcher)
GAIST, Samuel
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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GEORGE, Anjith
(Research Associate)
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HERMANN, Enno
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
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HOVSEPYAN, Sevada
(Research Associate)
KÄMPF, Jérôme
(Senior Research Scientist)
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KAYAL, Salim
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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KHALIL, Driss
(Junior R&D / Research Assistant)
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KOMATY, Alain
(Research Associate)
KOTWAL, Ketan
(Research Intern)
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KRIVOKUĆA HAHN, Vedrana
(Research Associate)
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KULKARNI, Ajinkya (Vijay)
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
KUMAR, Shashi
(Doctoral Researcher)
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LI DONG, Virgílio
(Apprentice)
LUÉVANO GARCÍA, Luis Santiago
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
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MACEIRAS, Jérémy
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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MAGIMAI DOSS, Mathew
(Senior Research Scientist)
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MARCEL, Christine
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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MARCEL, Sébastien
(Senior Research Scientist with Academic Title, Interim management team)
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MAYORAZ, André
(Research and Development Engineer)
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MICHEL, Samuel
(Research and Development Engineer)
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MOHAMMADI, Amir
(Research and Development Engineer)
MOTLICEK, Petr
(Senior Research Scientist)
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NANCHEN, Alexandre
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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OTROSHI SHAHREZA, Hatef
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
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OUTUMURO BUENO, Alberto
(Research Assistant)
ÖZTÜRK, Ünsal
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
POLAC, Magdalena
(Research Assistant)
PRASAD, Amrutha
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
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PUROHIT, Tilak
(Research Intern)
RAHIMI NOSHANAGH, Parsa
(Doctoral Researcher)
ROUX, Thibault
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
SANCHEZ-CORTES, Dairazalia
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
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ULUCAN, Ibrahim
(Research Assistant)
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VERZAT, Colombine
(Senior Research and Development Engineer)
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VIDIT, Vidit
(Postdoctoral Researcher)
VILLATORO TELLO, Esaú
(Research Associate)
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WATAWANA, Hasindri (Sankalpana)
(Doctoral Researcher)
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ZANGGER, Alicia
(Research and Development Engineer)
- website
Publication highlights
Integrating daylight with general and task lighting: A longitudinal in-the-wild study in individual and open space working areas, Chantal Basurto, Michael Papinutto, Moreno Colombo, Roberto Boghetti, Kornelius Reutter, Julien Nembrini and Jérôme Kämpf, in: Solar Energy Advances, 2, 2022
This paper makes use of AI-based surrogate models to predict the indoor lighting conditions and control optimally the blinds and electric lighting to maintain visual comfort and achieve energy savings. More than 50% of electricity for lighting were saved without impacting significantly visual comfort over the course of our longitudinal experiment.
Comprehensive Vulnerability Evaluation of Face Recognition Systems to Template Inversion Attacks Via 3D Face Reconstruction, H. S. Otroshi and S. Marcel, IEEE TPAMI 2023, DOI ( https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10239446 )
In this work, we propose a new method (called GaFaR) to reconstruct 3D faces from facial templates using a pretrained geometry-aware face generation network, and train a mapping from facial templates to the intermediate latent space of the face generator network. We train our mapping with a semi-supervised approach using real and synthetic face images. For real face images, we use a generative adversarial network (GAN)-based framework to learn the distribution of generator intermediate latent space. For synthetic face images, we directly learn the mapping from facial templates to the generator intermediate latent code. We demonstrated the transferability of our attack with state-of-the-art methods across other face recognition systems. We also performed practical presentation attacks on face recognition systems using the digital screen replay and printed photographs, and evaluated the vulnerability of face recognition systems to different template inversion attacks.
Claim-Dissector: An Interpretable Fact-Checking System with Joint Re-ranking and Veracity Prediction, Martin Fajcik, Petr Motlicek and Pavel Smrz, in: Association for Computational Linguistics, Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2023:10184–10205, 2023.
This paper describes new latent variable model for fact-checking and fact-analysis, which given a claim and a set of retrieved provenances allows learning jointly: (i) what are the relevant provenances to this claim (ii) what is the veracity of this claim. We propose to disentangle the per-provenance relevance probability and its contribution to the final veracity probability in an interpretable way - the final veracity probability is proportional to a linear ensemble of per-provenance relevance probabilities. This way, it can be clearly identified the relevance of which sources contributes to what extent towards the final probability. We show that our system achieves state-of-the-art results on FEVER dataset comparable to two-stage systems typically used in traditional fact-checking pipelines, while it often uses significantly less parameters and computation.
Project highlights
Eguzki, 2020-2024, SFOE, KÄMPF: A simulation program for district heating networks based on artificial intelligence for the rapid and predictive resolution of complex looped networks
The project focuses on the pivotal role of district heating networks in harnessing lost heat for energy efficiency. It uses artificial intelligence to optimize network design, reduce costs, and minimize energy losses before significant investments are made.
TRESPASS, 2020-2024, H2020, MARCEL: Biometrics security and privacy preservation
The aim of this project is to combat rising security challenges with biometric technologies which are growing at a fast pace. More particularly, our researchers are investigating new types of security protection (e.g. presentation attack detection (PAD), morphing attack detection (MAD), deepfake detection (DD) or poisoning detection technologies) and privacy preservation (e.g. vulnerability assessment, template protection or computationally feasible encryption solutions).
CRiTERIA, 2021-2024, H2020, MOTLICEK: Comprehensive data-driven Risk and Threat Assessment Methods for the Early and Reliable Identification, Validation and Analysis of migration-related risks
The project aims to strengthen and expand existing risk analysis methods by introducing a novel, comprehensive but feasible and human-rights sensitive risk and vulnerability analysis framework for border agencies. The project started in 2021 and runs for three years. Idiap contributes to the project by developing innovative solutions automatically extracting relevant evidence from spoken and textual resources. Among technologies developed by Idiap are: (a) multilingual automatic speech recognition, (b) fact-checking system (i.e., system which can verify a claim formulated in natural language, whether it is true or not, by confirming against other factoid sources, and (c) reliability detector (i.e., a tool which can automatically evaluate the reliability of source (related to general OSINT data) as an unavoidable block for the fact-checking system.
Full list of related projects
Eguzki and IVECT, 2020-2023, SFOE, Kämpf
Built environment sustainability
SOTERIA, 2022-2024, EU, Marcel
Face recognition anti-spoofing
GRAIL, 2022-2025, US IARPA, Marcel
Person recognition at a distance
TRESPASS, 2020-2024, EU, Marcel
Biometrics security and privacy preservation
CRiTERIA, 2021-2024, EU, Motlicek
Comprehensive data-driven risk and threat assessment methods for the early and reliable Identification, validation and analysis of migration-related risks
ROXANNE, 2019-2023, EU, Motlicek
Real-time network, text and speaker analytics for combating organized crime
TRACY, 2023-2025, EU, Motlicek
Big-data analytics from base-stations registrations and e-evidence system