Safe and legal global transport is essential to human welfare, but it demands that customs authorities implement security regulations with a special focus on illicit goods. To enable enforcement of regulations tackling illicit goods trafficking, customs authorities have expressed their need for portable, affordable, non-intrusive, reliable screening technologies aiming to facilitate on-site and rapid inspections. The current technologies are mainly based on X-ray screening, but have its limitations in detecting illicit goods, are very expensive and the process is time consuming. This makes that currently less than 5% of the containers may be inspected, which is undesirable for customs authorities and society. In the METEOR project, the consortium will develop a prototype of a portable and versatile air sampling-based screening system. This will enable customs administrations worldwide to rapidly and reliably inspect for the presence of illicit goods. The METEOR technology will provide a new concept of cargo screening detector with a highly efficient air sampling technique and the ion mobility multidetector sensing technology. The METEOR analyser relies on a very innovative concept of a multi-detector differential mobility analyser (DMA), that classifies molecular ions based upon their electrical mobility. This generates a chemical fingerprint of the samples, and after the processing with non-targeted screening techniques, it is possible to accurately classify and detect the threats. The focus will be on the detection of illicit drugs, but also explosives and other substances. The goal is to develop the METEOR technology up to TRL7, and validate it in the operational environment. This is done by the four customs administrations (The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Ireland) involved in the project, that cover some of the main ports in Europe.

PARSEC is a project about parcel and letter security in the context of postal and express courier services. The project delivers an ambitious set of solutions by developing, configuring, customising, and piloting innovative tools, services and security management views to fight the abuse of postal and express courier flows for criminal and terrorist purposes. The four PARSEC innovation areas and three use cases strengthen risk analysis and redefine threat detection and resilience capabilities of parcel service providers, customs authorities, police agencies, and other relevant stakeholders. PARSEC develops and tests three next-generation non-intrusive detection technologies (multi-energy photon counting detector, neutron-induced gamma-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction) and combine them into a detection architecture (= system-of-system) for optimal detection accuracy, speed and reliability. With PARSEC solutions postal and express operators, customs, and police authorities will be more capable to fight crime and terrorism, put in place a stronger deterrent, and to ensure safe and undisrupted postal and express services.

Security and fraud in cross-border trade and supply chains are key priorities for the EU customs administrations due to the increasing risk of transnational crime and terrorism and the e-commerce-driven growth of customs declarations. Hence, EU customs administrations have to rapidly increase their capability to search for more accurate data sources to better assess these risks and increase their inspection hit rate. To address this challenge, PROFILE seeks to accelerate the uptake of state-of-the-art data analytics and incorporation of new data sources for more effective and efficient European customs risk management. The project provides tailored solutions, that build on modern methods in machine learning, graph-based analytics, and natural language processing, to help targeting officers and strategic analysts to collect and organise unstructured data, data-mine large datasets, apply semi-supervised machine learning that utilises feedback of control results, and to visualize complex data sets. PROFILE enables customs-to-customs systematic sharing of Entry Summary Declarations and other risk-relevant information through the EU-wide PROFILE Risk Data Sharing Architecture (RDSA). The project also connects national customs risk management systems to logistics Big Data of INTTRA and the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and provides customs an improved access to online data, especially valuation-relevant data of e-commerce sites. PROFILE also strengthens cooperation and data exchange among customs and other competent authorities. Better access to data, customised state-of-the-art data analytics, and stronger cooperation will provide the customs an enhanced 360º view on cross-border cargo flows. With PROFILE solutions, customs administration can increase substantially the hit rate of inspections and their capacity to cope with transnational crime, terrorism, and the dramatic e-commerce-driven growth of customs declarations.

PEN-CP, the Pan-European Network of Customs Practitioners – EU Horizon 2020 funded Customs security practitioner project – acts as a European Customs innovation boosting network, powered by an innovation-centric online platform, and tailored innovation intermediary services. Since the start of the project (Sep.2018), the project consortium includes the following 13 administrations as full partners (9 EU and 4 non-EU): ALB, AUT, BEL, EST, GBR, HUN, IRL, LTU, LVA, NLD, MKD, NOR & SVK. PEN-CP focuses on accelerating innovation efforts across three core Customs technical areas: Data and risk management; Detection technologies; and Laboratory equipment. We have a broad variety of innovation and knowledge instruments in use, including Technology grants, Challenge competitions, Innovation awards, Annual studies and Expert reports. Across our activities, we aim to connect innovation-spirited Customs officers, helping them to ‘find friends in Customs innovation’. The vision is to become a permanent Customs innovation boosting network, helping to accelerate both incremental and radical innovations, for the benefit of Customs administrations in Europe and beyond.

The threat of CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives) components used by terrorists is major concerns for EU and worldwide security. Today there is a major security gap in the existing security flow that can be used by terrorists to hide and smuggle CBRNE materials inside containers and vehicles. The challenge of improving container and vehicles border crossing and critical infrastructure entrance security checks is of great importance in fighting terrorist threats, theft and smuggling. Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) could be detonated using nuclear weapon components, modified nuclear weapons, or a self-made device and Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) could be designed to disperse radioactive materials through an explosion (or ‘dirty bomb’).It was also reported that since 1998, in the US alone, there have been more than 1,300 reported incidents of lost, stolen, or abandoned devices containing sealed radioactive sources, an average of about 250 per year. Chemical and Biological are in use by terrorists. Report of Wm. Robert Johnston summarizes the “historical attacks using chemical or biological weapons” with 23 attacks since 1994, while all the recent attacks were done mainly by terrorists and the Syrian militants. The attacks demonstrating the attempts and capability of terrorists to acquire chemical and biological materials (chlorine, mustard, sarin, etc) and to prepare chemical or biological bombs. COSMIC system plans to bridge the major security gap for fast inspection of large number of containers and vehicles in sea port and in crossing borders for CBRNE materials. COSMIC’s technology can be adapted also to air containers. COSMIC proposes a novel technological approach for the detection of CBRNE materials hidden in shipping containers. COSMIC project includes the research, design and implementation of a three stage (primary, secondary, focused manual inspection) detection system using new set of innovative sensors