A Platform for Monitoring and Prediction of Social Impact and Acceptability of Modern Border Control Technology

A Platform for Monitoring and Prediction of Social Impact and Acceptability of Modern Border Control Technology

H2020 Border External Security Cluster – A METICOS Project initiative

(PRESS RELEASE) THESSALONIKI, 23-Feb-2022 — /EuropaWire/ — METICOS took the initiative to create the H2020 BES Cluster with the goal to establish an active community of projects that will work together, organise joint events, support each projects’ pilot activities, share information, discuss methodologies that each project prepares, share good practises and services, knowledge, identify common problems as well as solutions to these problems, and exchange ideas about future policy suggestions. Although each project is represented by the Project Coordinator or the Dissemination leader, information and updates on each project’s activities as well as information on the progress of the Cluster are also shared among the different consortia.

The Cluster activities were initiated in January 2021. METICOS has initiated the discussions with the dissemination managers, communicating the idea of establishing a joint space, a community where projects with relevant activities could support each other in many different ways, starting with communication, dissemination and exploitation activities to real joint pilot implementation activities, knowledge and practices exchange and use of practices and methodologies.

The H2020 BES Cluster consists of the following projects:

TRESSPASS is a European research project in the H2020 framework and Border and External Security thematic area, receiving EU funding under GA 787120. The overall scope of TRESSPASS is to modernise the way the security checks at border crossing points (BCPs) are held out at land, air, and sea. TRESSPASS imports the concept of “risk-based” security checks and proposes an analytic framework for modeling risk as well as a systematic approach of quantifying risk, based on a set of indicators ranging from real-time behaviour analytics to intelligent information extraction and sharing that can accurately be measured across all four tiers of the EU Integrated Border Management:
(1) measures undertaken in, or jointly with third countries or service providers;
(2) cooperation with neighbouring countries;
(3) border control and counter-smuggling measures, and
(4) control measures within the area of free movement.

MIRROR aims to develop an integrated platform, a set of tools, as well as a systematic methodology for the comprehensive inter-media analysis of the perception of Europe, the detection of discrepancies between the perception of and reality in Europe, and the creation of awareness for the impact of such misconceptions.

The multidisciplinary consortium consists of fourteen partners from seven countries from research and industry, as well as practitioners. The consortium will cooperate to gain a better understanding of how Europe is perceived abroad and the mechanisms involved in the process. The MIRROR Project was launched in June 2019 and has a period of three years.

ITFLOWS will generate novel insights on migration. The purpose of ITFLOWS is to provide accurate predictions and adequate management solutions of migration flow in the European Union in the phases of reception, relocation, settlement, and integration of migration, according to a wide range of human factors and using multiple sources of information. These insights will be provided by an evidence-based ICT enabled solution (the EUMigraTool) and precise models. All solutions will have fitness for purpose continually validated by policy-makers and practitioners in cooperation with civil society organisations in a dynamic and iterative process.

ITFLOWS will propose tailor-made solutions for practitioners and policymakers for managing migration. On the one hand, the EUMigraTool targets first-line-practitioners, second-level reception organisations, and municipalities. It will provide modular solutions based on the prediction of migration flows and the identification of risks of tensions between migrants and EU citizens. On the other hand, an in-depth analysis of drivers, patterns, and choices of migration as well as public sentiment towards migration will lead to the drafting of adequate recommendations and good practices for policymakers, governments and EU institutions.

PERCEPTIONS examines how Europe and the EU are seen by people who have immigrated there or intend to do so. It examines what perceptions of Europe exist among this group, how they are formed, whether they correspond to reality, and how they influence migration decisions. PERCEPTIONS also examines how the flow of information could be distorted and whether inaccurate information could lead to a threat to the security of migrants (e.g. through dangerous border crossings) or even national security (e.g. radicalisation).

PERSONA project has been brought into being to come up with a unified and tailored Impact Assessment Method for No-Gate Crossing Point Solutions capable of appropriately evaluating border controlling technologies and of ensuring that these solutions meet the requirements and expectations of governments, LEAS, and border crossing individuals.

EFFECTOR aims to enhance maritime surveillance, improve decisions support, and foster collaboration of maritime stakeholders by implementing an Interoperability Framework and associated Data Fusion and Analytics services for Maritime Surveillance and Border Security that will allow faster detection of new events, better informed decision making, achievement of a joint understanding and undertaking of a situation across borders, allowing seamless cooperation between operating authorities and on-site intervention forces ensuring that all existing privacy and data protection rules are fully respected. Specifically, EFFECTOR will unlock the full capabilities of maritime surveillance systems and data sharing at a tactical and strategic level by introducing applied solutions for enhanced border and external security, including the implementation of a multilayered data lake platform for end-to-end interoperability and data exploitation, the exchange of enhanced situational awareness pictures at a different level with CISE and EUROSUR, the adoption of interoperability standards for exploiting data sources and systems currently underutilided in the maritime environment and the demonstration of new concepts and tools for knowledge extraction, semantic representation, data fusion, analytics, and federated querying that can scale from local to regional and up to national and transnational level.

D4FLY identifies, reduces, and avoids vulnerabilities in the identity lifecycle of modern border management, thereby strengthening European Smart Borders against serious and organised crime. It does this by exploring, developing, and validating new technologies for identity and document verification – including biometrics-on-the-fly, and even explores how this could work in risk-based border management concepts.

The D4FLY project will augment the current capabilities and capacities of border authorities in countering emerging threats in document and identity verification (e.g., forged documents, impostor fraud, morphed faces) at manual and highly automated border control points and in the issuance process of genuine documents.

In BORDERUAS nineteen (19) organisations from twelve (12) European countries joined forces for a new project on technologies that enhance border and external security. The project will combine for the first time a multi-role lighter-than-air (LTA) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with an ultra-high resolution multi-sensor surveillance payload supporting border surveillance, search & rescue applications, and specifically rough terrain detection.

iMARS project aims to provide image morphing and manipulation attack detection solutions for the evaluation of ID document authenticity, ID document verification, and fraud detection. iMARS will deliver mobile tools to check document integrity. The technology will be assessed from an ethical, legal, and societal perspective, and validated in real border control conditions. iMARS will support the standardisation of these solutions and their evaluation protocols and will provide training, guidelines, and best practices to border guards, document investigators, and passport application officers.

ROBORDER aims at developing and demonstrating a fully functional autonomous border surveillance system with unmanned mobile robots including aerial, water surface, underwater, and ground vehicles which will incorporate multimodal sensors as part of an interoperable network. The project intends to implement a heterogeneous robot system and enhance it with detection capabilities for early identification of criminal activities at border and coastal areas along with marine pollution events.

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METICOS Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 883075.

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METICOS Dissemination and Exploitation manager: Mpampis Chatzimallis chatzimallis@vilabs.eu

SOURCE: METICOS Consortium