Sub call of: H2020-BES-2014-2015

H2020-BES-2015 TOPICS:

• Maritime Border Security topic 1: radar systems for the surveillance of coastal and pre-frontier areas and in support of search and rescue operations

Specific challenge:
Activities in the Mediterranean Sea related to border surveillance, including fight against drug trafficking and illegal immigration as well as search-and-rescue operations require for the authorities to detect at a long distance (typically: over the horizon) the presence of small vessels. The performance of existing radar systems need to be improved to that effect, or to be combined with other technologies. The cost and power requirements of such systems need to be lowered. Their deployment must also take into account the coastal environment, and they must integrate properly in the landscape. They should interface seamlessly with existing infrastructure supporting operations undertaken, or the services provided by the CISE constituent communities.
Type of action: Research and innovation action
The output of the proposal is expected to lead to development of (a) prototype(s) up to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5; please see part G of the General Annexes.
TRL 5 – technology validated in relevant environment
Indicative budget: The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between €4m and €8m would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

• Maritime Border Security topic 2: affordable and easily deployable technologies for EU coastal border surveillance with reduced impact on the environment

• Border crossing points topic 1: Novel mobility concepts for land border security  

  Border authorities are facing new challenges to secure land borders of the EU/Schengen areas, while the recent trends show a significant increase of travellers’ flows. In the meantime, travellers are requiring fast and convenient border crossing, therefore pushing authorities to implement novel approaches in order to maintain and even improve the throughput at the crossing points.
  Infrastructure for land border checks is not very flexible. As a consequence, improved solutions are required. They could rely on the development of mobility concepts along with traveller programmes that are extensively being developed in order to facilitate border crossing. Moreover, the current wide-spread use of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets provide potentially exploitable means that could (or could not) be combined with border authorities dedicated mobile equipment to perform identity checking for border security.
Type of action: Research & Innovation Actions
Indicative budget: The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between €2m and €5m would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

• Border crossing points topic 2: Exploring new modalities in biometric-based border checks 

   The ever-growing number of travellers crossing the EU borders poses a serious challenge to the border control authorities in terms of a reduced amount of time for carrying out border checks. Consequently, efforts are being undertaken to facilitate the travel of bona-fide and genuine passengers and simultaneously to safeguard high level of security. In particular, in the field of person and document authentication and/or verification, the  deployment of biometric-based approaches led to significant advances as regards making the border control processes more efficient. Further explorations, going beyond state-of-the-art, of biometric-based person identification detection techniques are expected to contribute to making the daily work of border control authorities more efficient and to significantly facilitating bona-fide non-EU citizens in crossing EU external borders.
Type of action: Research & Innovation Actions
Indicative budget: The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between €3m and €5m would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

• Supply Chain Security topic 1: Development of an enhanced non-intrusive (stand-off) scanner 

   Smugglers try to evade controls at borders by using their bodies as the conduit to conceal prohibited or restricted goods. These items may be narcotics, explosives, currency and weapons and could also be ampoules containing chemical and biological threats. All these items could remain undetected by conventional technologies.
  There is a need to develop body-scan technology able to discern those commodities sought by Customs from benign materials carried by travellers. The device/system should have the capability to automatically identify the chemical composition of the main threat commodities. Such systems are expected to improve efficiency of inspection of suspected individuals, improve security at the border and act as a deterrent to other potential smugglers.
Type of action: Research & Innovation Actions
Indicative budget: The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between €2m and €5m would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

• Information management topic 2: Information management, systems and infrastructure for civilian EU External Actions 

   The broad range and the complexity of CSDP missions make the ability to manage information and resources efficiently critical to decision-making, planning, and engaging capabilities within such missions, and essential to increase their efficiency, visibility and impact. The many processes, procedures, information management systems, and equipment currently in use for such missions need to be identified, characterized, and modelled to constitute a coherent and interoperable situational awareness and information exchange capability and operation control centre.
Type of action: Coordination and Support Action (CSA). 

• Conflict prevention and peace building topic 2: Training curricula for Conflict Prevention and Peace Building personnel 

   Over the last ten years, the Commission has become increasingly active in the field of Conflict Prevention and Peace Building (CPPB). This involvement is likely to further increase over the years to come and a more extensive use of the articles 42 to 46 on the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) of the Treaty on European Union. 

Projects under this proposal should:

1. review current understanding and training relating to conflict prevention and peace building in order to take into account current practice, including the effect of outsourcing of some security work, and the potential divergences in understandings; and
2. develop new training methods in the field of civilian conflict prevention and peace building such as: conflict prevention, mediation, Security System Reform (SSR), Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD), anti-corruption, early warning systems, etc.