An EnhaNceD Common InfoRmatiOn Sharing EnvironMent for BordEr CommanD, Control and CoordinAtion Systems

Project Information

ANDROMEDA

Grant agreement ID: 833881

DOI 10.3030/833881

Closed project

EC signature date 26 June 2019

Start date 1 September 2019

End date 31 August 2021

Funded under

• Secure societies - Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens

Total cost € 6 009 589,29

EU contribution € 4 999 462,50

Coordinated by

MINISTRY OF MARITIME AFFAIRS AND INSULAR POLICY
Greece

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ANDROMEDA (An EnhaNceD Common InfoRmatiOn Sharing EnvironMent for BordEr CommanD, Control and CoordinAtion Systems)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2021-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

European Border Security faces many challenges given the length of borders, the variety of terrain configurations and pressures due to the geopolitical situation in the last years. The EU region has approximately 8000km of land border to secure while the maritime border situation varies, with an extensive maritime border made complex by large numbers of islands. Almost every European State possesses an external border (either land or maritime) and even if Border Security remains the responsibility of the independent member states there is an element of coherence of approach imposed as a consequence of multi-lateral agreements. Historically, the Mediterranean region has been always witnessing challenges, like cross-border crime, irregular migration flows, persistent natural hazards (forest fires, floods and earthquakes, etc.), which required cross-border and multi-discipline collaboration to optimise response actions.

Taking into account the number of European and National government agencies that have missions on land and sea, Europe needs to enhance cross-border and cross-sectoral cooperation to deliver border security. In this direction two important initiatives EUROSUR and CISE have been put in place by the European Commission with the aim to increase the efficiency of border surveillance activities via the collection and exchange of land and maritime surveillance information between control authorities. However, the sharing of surveillance data between user communities has not taken place to the same extent leading to situations where data that could be useful to other user communities are not shared, or where several authorities are collecting the same data.

The ANDROMEDA project is a 24-month project funded by the European Commission which aims to unlock the full potential of the Common Information Sharing Environment, by enhancing the Maritime CISE Model and by extending its scope to the land border operations. The ANDROMEDA ecosystem consists of a distributed set of systems and services interconnected according to the CISE principles that aim to foster faster detection of new events, better informed decision making and achievement of a joint understanding and undertaking of a situation across borders. The project is coordinated by the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy of Greece and supported by three large enterprises, four SMEs, three RTOs and eight Coast and Border Authorities across seven Countries. The ANDROMEDA System has been tested and validated in 3 long lasting trials.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The key exploitable results of ANDROMEDA are summarized below:
A. Command and Control Systems
1. ENGAGE BME (TRL 9): The ENGAGE BME platform is fully-fledged Command and Control solution catering for first responders in the field and personnel in a local or regional or national command centers which was upgraded to handle all the e-CISE entity information and to be able to communicate via e-CISE to other e-CISE C2s.
2. Socrates C2 (TRL 8): Command and Control solution for local, regional or national command centers, totally compliant with CISE and eCISE standard.
3. GeoC2 Command and Control Solution for eCISE (TRL 8): Enhanced product Information Exchange capabilities and mission execution capabilities in a CISE-based ecosystem.
B. Data Fusion
4. TRITON (TRL 9): The TRITON Abnormal Vessel Behaviour Engine is an abnormal vessel behaviour service that uses a geospatial complex event processing to identify and analyse motion patterns which was enhanced with additional monitoring patterns for maritime and includes also the detection of additional anomalies in the land domain.
5. Socrates Data Fusion (TRL 8): This component is in charge of getting information from different track sources and fusing them, providing an improved track. It is applicable in the maritime and land domain.
6. Data Fusion Engine (Data Fusion Gateway & Data Fusion service) (TRL 7): The ANDROMEDA Data Fusion Engine is a platform which performs Data Fusion operations on data, originating from different sources and combines them to produce accurate and meaningful high-level information.
C. Decision Support Tools
7. Decision Support Tools (TRL 8): The DST (Decision Support Tool) consists of: (i) WITOIL: It is a service to deliver and disseminate the prediction of the transport and transformation of actual or hypothetical oil spills; (ii) VISIR: It is a service providing optimized nautical routes; (iii) OCEAN-SAR: It is a service provided to support maritime authorities and operational centers during search-and-rescue operations.
8. Meteo-Oceanographic Forecasting Services (TRL 9): Production and operational delivery of Meteo-Oceanographic forecasting products.
9. IANUS, specialization of ESSG - Enterprise Service Security Grid - Framework (TRL 8): It provided enhanced classification of targets based on their behaviour, behaviour analysis, comparison with learned models, identification of common and divergent behaviours, automatic generation of alerts associated with targets that present underlying threats or offenses.
D. Advanced Assets
10. INUS Platform (TRL 7): Intelligent UxV Surveillance platform for object detection, identification and tracking via UAV and terrestrial image processing providing e-CISE interface for data sharing with C2s in ANDROMEDA.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The ANDROMEDA solution has been tested in operational environment for several months. 4 successive releases have been performed and the practitioners have validated each one in their daily operations. During the project implementation, the end-users remarked the relevant role that CISE is going to play in the near future so the enhancement of CISE in maritime and land domain, and the full compliance of the C2 systems with CISE were the main innovative benefits of the project. For that reason, an Exploitation Plan has been prepared and a Business Plan has been elaborated.

Overall, ANDROMEDA project has reused capabilities and results from other European funded projects, while the generated enhanced CISE data model has been published in order to help other initiatives as well. The improvement of the collaboration among the different agencies involved in the prevention of cross border crime and border surveillance is a key factor that helps in the reduction of the cost and increases the efficiency of the systems. All the data exchange was based on CISE standard and the ANDROMEDA consortium worked closely with European Agencies (EMSA, FRONTEX, JRC) for exchanging information and collecting feedback.

During the ANDROMEDA project new sensors have been deployed, some fixed and other in an innovative UAV, C2 and advanced e-CISE compatible services have been developed to improve the situational awareness.

ANDROMEDA's High Level Architecture