In the last years irregular migration has dramatically increased, and is no longer manageable with existing systems. Improved methods for border surveillance are necessary to ensure an effective and efficient EU border management. FOLDOUT focus is on through foliage detection in the inner and outermost regions of the EU. Foliage penetration is an unsolved important part of border surveillance. By solving the problem of unreliable detections in such harsh environments border guards’ workloads are reduced, costs are reduced and, last but not least, lives can be saved. Detecting people through dense foliage in extreme climates with only a penetration technology is prone to high fault rates. FOLDOUT will build a system that combines various sensors and technologies and intelligently fuses these into an effective and robust intelligent detection platform. Fusing several sensor signals increases the effectiveness of detection. Further, sensors will be influenced (i.e. detection parameters adapted) by events detected by other sensors in the vicinity. By integrating data, such as vehicle traffic, from outside the immediate border area pre-events can be detected and learned. The events will be analysed with machine learning tools to continuously increase the systems detection and tracking capability. FOLDOUT will make the tasks of Border Guards simpler and faster by combining events from various sensors to give a complete situation threat assessment combined with suggested reaction scenarios. A two year pilot in Bulgaria and demonstrators in Greece, Finland and French Guiana FOLDOUT will provide fundamental enhancements in the domain of border surveillance and improved search & rescue scenarios.

BODEGA for Proactive Enhancement of Human Performance in Border Control BODEGA project will investigate and model Human Factors in border control to provide innovative socio-technical solutions for enhancing border guards’ performance of critical tasks, support border management decision-making, and optimize travellers’ border crossing experience. BODEGA will develop a PROPER toolbox which integrates the solutions for easy adoption of the BODEGA’s results by stakeholders in border control. PROPER toolbox which will integrate ethical and societal dimensions to enable a leap of border control towards improved effectiveness and harmonisation across Europe. The PROPER tools will be co-designed and thoroughly validated with relevant stakeholders and end-users. The work will be carried within the framework of Responsible Research and Innovation to ensure the ethical and societal compatibility of the project work and provided solutions as well as emphasis on the foreseen future with smarter borders. With its focus on in-depth understanding of the human factors in border control and PROPER toolbox, BODEGA will enable a leap of European border guard culture towards professionalism. BODEGA validated, modular and flexible toolbox will enhance the performance of border control stakeholders - border guards, border authorities and citizens - to create more secure, efficient and effective border crossing, focusing on the borders between Schengen agreement and external countries. A holistic view of the Human Factors with respect to the Smart Borders will be developed. The project focuses on human and organizational factors of border control technologies and processes and examines the effects of introducing innovative technologies into key border guard tasks, traveller’s performance and behaviour and to the total system at different levels and at different border control types: rail, sea and air borders.

ARESIBO aims at improving the efficiency of the border surveillance systems by providing the operational teams and the tactical command and control level with an accurate and comprehensive information. The pillars of research in ARESIBO are three-fold: 1. Set-up a complete configuration at tactical and execution level to optimise the collaboration between human and sensors (fixed and mobile), 2. Improve situation awareness by enhancing the understanding of the situation through adapted processing of sensor data, correlation between heterogeneous data and information and creation of knowledge through deep learning techniques and 3. Create a situation awareness capability at C2 level that will combine reports on previous missions, real time situation understanding and threat analysis for future actions. This capability will be used to optimise the operations (teams deployment and sensor positioning) as well as an online briefing tool for the teams that will be able to access to the results of the previous missions while in the field. ARESIBO integrates research activities in the domain of 1. surveillance platforms (air, ground, surface, underwater) to optimise the collaborative capabilities of the platforms and their positioning (between themselves and with the teams), 2. Sensor processing to interpret, fuse and correlate all the data to produce information and knowledge and 3. Augmented reality techniques to elaborate and provide to the operators a situation awareness picture which is fit for their missions (minimum information for maximal understanding) both as team level and tactical C2 level. The ARESIBO system will be developed incrementally during the 3 years with two major versions that will lead to sub-versions for land and maritime borders. The system will be tested and assessed in 1. a controlled environment enabling testing at any time without pre-requisite authorisations and 2. in real conditions in Finland, Greece, Romania and Portugal for the 2 versions.