EU customs administrations implement common rules at the EU Customs Union borders. They protect society while facilitating legitimate trade. Alongside the collection of duties and taxes, customs core activities now include security related roles including fighting illegal trade in drugs, weapons, radioactive and nuclear materials, security sensitive dual-use items, illicit waste and other environmental threats. To deal with high volumes of goods moving across the Union`s borders, and the need to restrict physical interventions to a minimum, customs operate a risk-based, multi-level detection architecture at Border Crossing Points. This must take into account the nature of the operational environment, the threat materials to be detected, and the types of concealments used by smugglers. For more than two decades, customs have used X-ray scanning as a first level control. However, current applications of this technology continue to result in a relatively high level of false positives/negatives and inconclusive results, giving rise to secondary controls, including physical inspections. This can be attributed in part to a failure to develop operator skills through accredited training and sharing of images of threat materials and concealments in a structured manner. Moreover, second level technology controls such as Raman spectroscopy are frequently applied with a narrow focus. The EU Customs Control Equipment Instrument aims to harmonize customs controls at the EU borders and to upgrade customs equipment including X-ray scanners and field analysis devices. BORDERLINK aims to make a significant contribution to CCEI aims as well as the planned reform of the Customs Union. BORDERLINK will enhance customs` capabilities and performance at EU borders by advancing the detection and identification of threat materials, improving training, communication and data sharing. It will help to strengthen supply chain controls and promote the Green Customs Initiative.

MultiRELOAD focusses on the specific role and challenges of inland ports as multimodal freight nodes in reaching Europe’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target of at least 55 % by 2030, thereby shifting a substantial part of the 75% of inland freight carried today by road in the EU to inland waterways and rail, and by increasing operational efficiency, safety and reliability of existing infrastructures through digitalization. Inland Ports are key for multimodal transport chains, both continental and maritime transport. Without efficient nodes in the hinterland multimodal transport is not possible. However, the constraints and barriers are much higher in inland ports (space, urbanisation, demand, investments) than in seaports. MultiRELOAD enhances the collaboration between different freight nodes in Europe to jointly test innovations and create favorable market conditions for multimodal freight transport solutions. MultiRELOAD will demonstrate solutions in three Innovation Areas with specific aims by 2025 – mirroring measures of the EU’s Smart Mobility Strategy: A) Smart multimodal logistics: facilitate a shift from road to rail & IWT of 5%; B) Digital & Automated Multimodal Nodes and Corridors: increase operational efficiency by 20 % raise of handling capacity; C) Innovative business models: leading to an average cost reduction of freight transport by 10%. MultiRELOAD involves highly ambitious logistics hubs, including the multimodal node duisport (DE), Duisburg's highly ambitious port and the world’s largest and most advanced trimodal inland hub terminal, and the trimodal nodes Ports of Vienna (AT) and Basel (CH). The project is backed up by additional funding & financing for better integration of the freight transport nodes into overall logistic chains of about 450 Mio. EUR. MultiRELOAD involves a total of 22 partners comprising of highly innovative technology, logistics and service providers, leading European research institutions and well-connected networks.

PLOTO aims at increasing the resilience of the Inland WaterWays (IWW) infrastructures and the connected land- infrastructures, thus ensuring reliable network availability under unfavourable conditions, such as extreme weather, accidents and other kind of hazards. Our main target is to combine downscaled climate change scenarios (applied to IWW infrastructures) with simulation tools and actual data, so as to provide the relevant authorities and their operators with an integrated tool able to support more effective management of their infrastructures at strategic and operational levels. Towards this direction, PLOTO aims to: - use high resolution modelling data for the determination and the assessment of the climatic risk of the selected transport infrastructures and associated expected damages; - use existing data from various sources with new types of sensor-generated data (computer vision) to feed the used simulator; - utilize tailored weather forecasts (combining seamlessly all available data sources) for specific hot-spots, providing early warnings with corresponding impact assessment in real time; - develop improved multi-temporal, multi-sensor UAV- and satellite-based observations with robust spectral analysis, computer vision and machine learning-based assessment for diverse transport infrastructures; - design and implement an integrated Resilience Assessment Platform environment as an innovative planning tool that will permit a quantitative resilience assessment through an end-to-end simulation environment, running “what-if” impact/risk/resilience assessment scenarios. The effects of adaptation measures can be investigated by changing the hazard, exposure and vulnerability input parameters; - design and implement a Common Operational Picture, including an enhanced visualisation interface and an Incident Management System. The PLOTO integrated platform and its tools will be validated in three case studies in Belgium, Romania and Hungary.