The World Economic Forum suggests that transnational travel will increase by 50% over the next ten years, bringing the number of arrivals to 1.8bn by 2030 before the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the ever-increasing travel both on land and sea, delays and queues are often observed at cases where people are crossing border. These delays create huge frustration for the citizens and at the same time put extra burden to the border authorities’ staff. In Europe, airports have managed to improve to a certain extend the border crossing through the facial recognition booths for European citizens that own an RFID enabled passport, however there are still huge queues observed. For non-European citizens, the situation is even worse. The border control for land and sea are placing all the effort to the border authorities staff requiring from them to check the passports of the travellers as well as to control the luggage and baggage. Reasonably, even without huge number of travellers, large delays and queues are observed. ODYSSEUS will enable citizens to seamlessly cross the border without stopping, while reducing the workload and improving productivity for Border Guard Authorities by providing highly detailed risk analysis. ODYSSEUS will leverage the power of digital technology offering to citizens the appropriate tools to cross land and sea borders in a secure and seamless manner without stopping while equipping the border authorities with novel tools for secure identity verification and unobtrusive vehicle/luggage/cargo checks, eliminating long delays at border areas. The proposed technologies will allow citizens to cross borders without any intervention by just leveraging their smartphones combined with strong and continuous identity verification. Remote vehicle/luggage scanning through X-Rays and UAVs, will allow authorities to remotely perform the appropriate controls.

CONNECTOR’s vision is to contribute to the European Integrated Border Management (EIBM) and to the EU Customs Action Plan by addressing the need of close cooperation between Customs, Border and Coast Guard Authorities within the current and upcoming challenging and demanding environment of borders’ control by further involving Customs to the Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) network and Enhanced Common Information Sharing Environment (e-CISE) through the proposed Customs Extended Common Information Sharing Environment (CE-CISE). CONNECTOR aims for the first time to suggest an integrated, common and shared risk assessment approach for all Border Management Authorities, considering the pan-EU common risk indicators per end user group (Customs, Border and Coast Guards Authorities including FRONTEX), to ensure external EU border and secure EU citizens from cross-border crime and/or secure the seamless flow of travellers, as recommended in the multiannual strategic policy document . Thus, in this sense, CONNECTOR proposal, will design and develop the CONNECTOR system as an interoperable technical environment, ensuring close and practical cooperation and information exchange at all levels. The design and the development of the CONNECTOR system will be based on the analysis of current policy initiatives in EU level (directives, policy and staff documents, guidelines etc.) along with needs, gaps and future views of the end-user groups going beyond previous initiatives (ANDROMEDA, MARISA, EFFECTOR, etc.), complying with the Societal, Ethical and Legal (SoEL) requirements and regulations, following the SoEL-by-design principle. The CONNECTOR system will be validated in real operational environment, based on well-defined National, Cross-border and Transnational use cases defined commonly by Customs and Border and Coast Guards authorities, during three (3) long lasting trials (Demonstration and Testing) under standardised methodology.

SMILE proposes a novel mobility concept that addresses the aforementioned challenges by designing, implementing and evaluating in relevant environments (TRL6) prototype management architecture, for the accurate verification, automated control, monitoring and optimization of people’ flows at Land Border Infrastructures. It leverages the capabilities of the smart mobile devices in biometric control for secure and trusted authentication, and elaborates on their exploitation as part of a multimodal biometric verification process that supplements / complements existing approaches. Furthermore, SMILE’s mobility concept builds upon Private Cloud Infrastructure technologies which communicate with remote SMILE handhelds through a secure gateway. SMILE ecosystem will target EU land borders which will be the beneficiaries of the proposed solutions. In fact, the proposed technology and business framework developed in SMILE will be validated through pan-European demonstrations in 3 BCPs. The operational properties of the technologies and overall solution will be validated and evaluated against cost, performance, effectiveness and usability indicators. Use cases will be supported by different architectural designs, which will be classified according to the operation mode. BCPs participating in the project’s pilots will deploy and evaluate the solution at business as usual and emergency situations across various status operations. SMILE aims to (1) minimise the exposure of BCPs to security risks and threats, and (2) help them successfully respond to security incidents, while relieving them from all unnecessary and costly efforts of identifying, acquiring and using the appropriate technology. To this CNBP, HBP & RBP BCP partners will deploy and validate the proposed secure & reliable ecosystem in two use cases (Romania Bulgaria), in which the adaptation of SMILE framework to focused applications will be performed.

The EU has experienced a surge in fixed border surveillance solutions, including physical barriers, covering 13% of external land borders. The BorderForce project responds to evolving threats by enhancing real-time surveillance capabilities. It introduces a dynamic system, featuring self-sufficient, transportable Command and Control (C2) Stations with configurable and extendable capabilities. These stations incorporate versatile surveillance towers with anti-drone features, integrating data from autonomous monitoring sensors and UAV systems. Dedicated satellite resources, including CubeSat, strategically positioned at high-risk spots, ensure frequent revisits to critical areas. To enable early threat assessment, BorderForce leverages Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), processing online data for border security threats. The project emphasizes ethical, legal, and social aspects, safeguarding fundamental rights in border surveillance capability development. BorderForce collaborates with EU and candidate country border authorities, customs, and Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) entities. It defines scenarios, gathers architecture feedback, and validates end user feedback. The project emphasizes data exchange, novel user interfaces (e.g., XR), and immersive training for collaborative threat assessment, promoting safety and security while upholding fundamental rights. This solution enhances resource sustainability by improving the coordination and deployment of reusable security measures. The BorderForce solution will be validated in 2 field trials to become TRL7. It ensures seamless operations in monitoring the flow of goods, people, and information. Addressing challenges like migration, smuggling, and geopolitical tensions, BorderForce contributes to regional stability, particularly in crises. Overall, it combines technological innovation and international collaboration to bolster border security, prioritizing fundamental rights and ethical considerations.

Security risks and threats in the maritime domain are becoming increasingly more complex day by day. Within the EU there have been significant increases in irregular migration flows and human trafficking and smuggling but also of other illegal activities, such as drugs and arms trafficking and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and –according to the FRONTEX “Risk Analysis for 2021” report- the challenge becomes even bigger. The European Union Maritime Security Strategy, and other EU initiatives such as EUROSUR and CISE, highlight that closer collaboration between authorities at national, regional and EU levels can constitute the key action to increase both situational awareness and operational efficiency. In particular, there is increased interest in assessing the viability of multi-authority cooperation in (especially high altitude) sensing and capability advancement for enhanced wide area surveillance of land, air and sea borders. EURMARS’s ground-breaking vision is to expand the common risk assessment practices currently deployed by authorities to enable the development, deployment and evaluation of a secure multitasking surveillance platform that improves sensing capabilities for a wide range of security risks and threats in wider border areas by clustering high altitude platforms technology, satellite imagery, UxVs and ground-based sensors into a novel joint surveillance capability. As part of the EURMARS framework, the various existing and future systems for maritime surveillance will be integrated, to allow for the collaborative operation and the provision of the sensing results to related authorities. The open architecture will build on the lessons learnt of previous initiatives, assimilate the knowledge of the stakeholders and their practice on CISE and other relevant systems, exploit the latest AI, risk assessment and visualization innovations, and undergo extensive technical and user acceptance tests and ethical and legal impact assessments.