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.
