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Esprit is encouraging R&D proposals on technologies for the detection and identification of landmines. A special session at the Esprit Information Day in Brussels on 3 March will be devoted to this topic.
The relevant tasks in the Esprit work-programme are 6.26, 6.27 and 6.28 in the area of HPCN embedded systems. Proposals, which should be submitted under the 15 March call, will be evaluated using a two-step procedure, with short proposals required by 15 April and full proposals due around the end of July. Consortia should give an active role to end-users, especially in verifying their requirements and testing systems under realistic operating conditions in the field. Contracts are likely to be for 1 to 3 years. If several projects are launched, their work will be coordinated.
According to United Nations' estimates, landmines kill some 20 000 civilians every year. Current techniques for clearing them are very costly. A recent workshop and study (report EUR 16329) on state-of-the-art localisation and identification techniques for anti-personnel mines, organised by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, identified the need for further R&D to develop and test improved methods for mine detection and identification. The Commission is already financing mine-clearance operations in various parts of the world, and this has confirmed that more efficient techniques and systems are required. To this end, the Commission has contracted a consortium of companies to carry out feasibility studies for a vehicle-mounted multisensor system. Results should be available in mid-1997 (for details, contact Dr Alois Sieber - Alois.Sieber@jrc.it). Future Esprit-sponsored projects will contribute to the next objective: the development of prototypes and their evaluation by independent bodies (for details, contact Patrick Van Hove - Patrick.VanHove@dg3.cec.be).
The Council's proposal for supplementary funding for the Fourth Framework Programme of R&D contains a provision for supporting the technologies needed for landmine clearance. A favourable decision by the Council and the European Parliament will extend the scope of Esprit's activities in this direction.
Esprit's HPCN unit
Patrick.VanHove@dg3.cec.be
fax +32-29-61692
The URL of this page is /esprit/src/demining.htm
It was last updated on 27 February 1997, and is maintained by esprit@dg3.cec.be