Consortium

The Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH), founded in 2000, is the only research centre in Northern Greece and one of the largest in the country. CERTH has important scientific and technological achievements in many areas including: Energy, Environment, Industry, Mechatronics, Information & Communication, Transportation & Sustainable Mobility, Health, Agro-biotechnology, Smart farming, Safety & Security, as well as several cross-disciplinary scientific areas. Today CERTH includes the following five institutes: (a) Chemical Process & Energy Resources Institute (CPERI), (b) Information Technologies Institute (ITI), (c) Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT), (d) Institute of Applied Biosciences (INAB), (e) Institute for Research and Technology Thessaly (IRETETH). Out of those, CERTH participates in this project through ITI.

Research of practical utility lies at the heart of all activities pursued by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Founded in 1949, the research organization undertakes applied research that drives economic development and serves the wider benefit of society. Its services are solicited by customers and contractual partners in industry, the service sector and public administration. With its clearly defined mission of application-oriented research and its focus on key technologies of relevance to the future, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft plays a prominent role in the German and European innovation process. Applied research has a knock-on effect that extends beyond the direct benefits perceived by the customer: Through their research and development work, the Fraunhofer Institutes help to reinforce the competitive strength of the economy in their local region, and throughout Germany and Europe.

The Estonian Academy of Security Sciences (EASS), established in 1992, is a state institution, providing professional education for civil servants belonging in the area of government under the Estonian Ministry of the Interior. The objective of the EASS is, through internal security related academic education, research and development activities, and also through the training of honest and competent public servants, to create a secure state and conditions for stable development across the state of Estonia and therewith contribute to the security of the entire European Union (EU). The EASS educates civil servants in four colleges and for the following specialties: Police and border guard officers, prison officers, rescue officers and, tax and customs officials and also offer a specific Master program for internal security officials. EASS is a leading competency centre in Northern Europe in terms of research and implementation of modern technological and digital solutions in different types of internal security and safety training activities such as virtual reality, augmented reality, massive data visualization and analyses etc.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd (VTT) is the leading research and technology company in the Nordic countries and has a national mandate in Finland. VTT uses its research and knowledge to provide expert services for its domestic and international customers and partners serving both private and public sectors. It has 73 years’ experience supporting clients growth with top-level research and science-based results. VTT develops new smart technologies, profitable solutions and innovative services. VTT cooperates with customers to produce technology for business and build success and well-being for the benefit of the society. It uses over 1,000,000 hours of brainpower a year to develop new technological solutions. The benefit someone gains from this spearhead research comes when VTT works to create new products, production processes, methods, and services. VTT ensures efficient utilization of science and technology with the aid of broad international cooperation and networking.

EVERIS is a multi-national consulting company that offers to its clients comprehensive business solutions covering all aspects of the value chain from business strategy to systems implementation. It is active in the banking, energy and utilities, financial, industrial, insurance, media, public administration, healthcare and telecommunications sectors. Currently, EVERIS group has operations in several European and Latin American countries, United States and a professional staff of more than 16,000 consultants. Thanks to the recently opened Brussels office, EVERIS is able to deliver the most innovative solutions and maintain easy communications channels with European customers.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is the Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) in Northern Ireland with responsibility for policing and security. Established in 2001, it replaced the RUC GC as part of the overall Belfast peace agreement implementation. For the PSNI, keeping people safe is the main priority; Policing with the Community is how they do it. For the PSNI, policing with the Community is about understanding and responding to the human impact of policing and is at the very centre of the delivery of operational policing in Northern Ireland.

The Portuguese National Guard (GNR), whose origins date back to 1801, at which time the Guarda Real de Polícia (Royal Police Guard) was created, is a Security Force constituted by military elements that are organized in a Special Body of Troops, which actively and permanently veil for the execution of the law and are dedicated to the security and public order maintenance cause as well as to the protection and defence of the people and their goods. The Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, the National Defence and Armed Forces Law, the Internal Security Law and the Law on the General Basis of the Military Condition constitute the institutional juridical framework on which the legislation of the present GNR is based. It has a double dependency, depending in time of peace, on the Minister of Internal Administration, for purposes of recruitment, administration, discipline and execution of the current service of its general mission and on the Minister of National Defence for purposes of uniformization and normalization of the military doctrine, armament and equipment. Its force may, in case of war or in situations of crisis, be placed under the operational dependency of the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, through its General-Commander.

The Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) is a scientific research and experimentation facility located in La Spezia, Italy. CMRE was established by the North Atlantic Council on 1 July 2012 as part of the NATO Science & Technology Organization. The CMRE and its predecessors have served NATO since 1959 as the SACLANT Anti-Submarine Warfare Centre, SACLANT Undersea Research Centre, NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC), and now as part of NATO’s Science & Technology Organization. Currently, much of the research performed at CMRE has civilian applications and addresses the international research community.

The Hungarian National Police is the only police agency in Hungary, with more than 42,000 sworn members. It undertakes all policing duties within Hungary, including criminal investigation, patrol activities, traffic policing and border control. It is led by the National Police Commissioner under the control of the Minister of the Interior. The body is divided into county police departments, with a further subdivision into regional and town police departments. County police departments and some special units are affiliated legal entities. It is also the agency which operates the 112 national emergency response systems, called the ESR (The Hungarian Border Guard was integrated into the HNP in 2008).

Robotnik (ROB) started its activity in 2002 and is currently a leading company in the European service robotics market. Robotnik is specialized in: Robotics product manufacturing and distribution (mobile robot platforms, mobile manipulators, arms, hands and humanoids). Robotics R&D end Engineering projects: Service Robotics Applications: i.e. development of robots for performing autonomous tasks for the well-being of humans or machines, excluding manufacturing. UGV Engineering: specific unmanned ground vehicle engineering. ROB is an SME and its team is formed by 30 persons including engineers and R&D team.

The Romanian Protection and Guard Service (SPP) is a state body with functions in the field of national security, specialized in providing protection for the Romanian dignitaries, the foreign dignitaries during their stay in Romania, and their families, within its legal competence. It also provides guard for the headquarters and residences of the above-mentioned dignitaries in accordance with the decisions of the Supreme Council of National Defence. In order to carry out its functions, the SPP collaborates with the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministry of the Interior, the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Special Telecommunications Service, with other specialized ministries and bodies of the central and local public administration.

Elettronica GmbH has been founded in 1978 in Meckenheim (Germany) as sister-company of Elettronica S.p.A., Italy, and since then it has been growing as an engineering system house with development, production and system integration capabilities. ELT has taken the leading role in the group for the design and provision of electronic systems for civilian and Public Security applications, including complex surveillance sensors. ELT is organised around three business lines, which focus on (1) high-quality electronic production, (2) system-to-platform integration, and (3) development of test and training systems. To provide innovative solutions to the Customers, ELT invests yearly up to 10% of its revenues for Research & Development. In parallel, ELT has been carrying out several research projects funded by the Ministry of Research and Education of Germany, the Ministry of Defence of Germany, the European Commission and the European GNSS Agency. In 2015 a significant renovation project has been carried out in ELT Production site of Meckenheim, which brought to the achievement of the EN 9100 Certification for the Aerospace and Defence markets.

The Hellenic Ministry of Defence (HMOD) applies the Government’s National Defence Policy. HMOD implements interventions focusing on the facilitation of the interaction with citizens like the digitalization of recruitment archives and services, the generation of digital charts and weather reports, and also incorporates departments and units that address social issues like public protection, crisis managements, search and rescue operations, humanitarian aid and social and environmental research. Navy Lighthouses’ Service, National Meteorological Office, Hellenic Military Geographical Service are some examples that prove the aforementioned interventions. Over the past years these authorities have managed a variety of projects funded by national or/and EU resources. Moreover, HMOD, through assets of Hellenic Army and Hellenic Navy, is co-responsible for the surveillance and monitoring of Hellenic sea and land boarders against symmetric and asymmetric threats such as illegal immigration and smuggling. Furthermore, HMOD objective is the comprehensive mid and long-term exploitation of the domestic state and private defence industry by the Armed Forces and the formation and participation with international key industry and R&D institutions in high value projects within the framework of H2020, EDA, ESA, NATO and FRONTEX.

CENTRIC (Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence & Organised Crime Research) is a multi-disciplinary and end-user orientated research body, located within the Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute (C3RI) at Sheffield Hallam University. The strategic aim of CENTRIC is to develop the intersection between four key stakeholders in the security domain: Citizens, Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA’s), Industry and Academia. The mission of CENTRIC is to provide a platform for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and the public, to focus on applied research in the Security domain. CENTRIC has close links with local, national and international LEA's and security specialist groups and is currently collaborating with a number of law enforcement agencies and leading technology providers. The centre builds on over six years of work by a range of colleagues across government, academia and the private sector. The CENTRIC team has experience of coordinating more than 20 independent EU and International research projects.

North Tyrrhenian Sea Port System Authority is a non-economic Public Body in charge, according to art. 6 of law 84/94 of the Italian state, of “guidance, planning, coordination, promotion and control of port operations and other commercial and industrial activities taking place in ports, with powers of regulations and ordinances”. Overseen by the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transportation (as all Italian Port Authorities), AdSP-MTS is responsible for guiding, programming, coordinating and controlling port operations and other commercial and industrial activities carried out in the Livorno port. It is an administrative authority and cannot be involved directly in carrying out industrial or commercial activities by law. It elaborates and adopts Port Master Plan; leases maritime domain areas and assets falling under its jurisdiction: issues authorizations to work in the port; sees to dredging seabed and, in general, to the maintenance of the common parts of port areas.

Oceanscan - Marine Systems & Technology, Lda, (OMST) is a Portuguese company devoted to the development, manufacturing and commercialization of small-sized, one-man portable Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). The company’s flagship product – the LAUV (Light Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) – is an underwater robot designed to answer environmental, inspection and security applications. The LAUV is an open system that relies on a set of open source software tools (both on-board and off-board) specifically designed to enable end-user developments and interoperability with third-party systems. For the last few years the company has been involved in several projects related with the development, implementation and deployment of networks of AUVs to address real life applications, like harbour security and surveillance, natural catastrophe response and many others of civil and military significance.

Bulgarian Defence Institute "Professor Tsvetan Lazarov" is the main scientific-research, testing-design and expert-technical structure in the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria. Bulgarian Defence Institutes’ work is focused to: Scientific-research activities, scientific-practical activities, development and experimental design activities in the sphere of Armaments, C4I Systems, Military Techniques, Logistic Equipment and Materials, Support to the Analysis of the situation of the Armaments, C4I Systems, and Military Techniques, Logistic Equipment and materials and working out of perspective prognoses on their development, Support to the Integrated Project Teams through taking part in the preparation, scientific monitoring and complete implementation of the defence programs and projects.

Copting is a full service provider for UAV operations (consulting, operations, construction, training and research). Copting is engaged in the professional and industrial UAV business. Covering the industry and public services needs with technical and operational consulting to the use of UAVs, the company also operates UAVs for clients, designs and builds UAVs up to 25 Kg MTOW and is providing flight training and support. With institutes of different universities several R&D projects for development and implementation of sensors and flight management components are ongoing. Moreover, Copting is operating a test and training centre in a secured area able to perform sophisticated training and education services as well as testing for UAVs of different concepts. The test centre is an accredited as Test Centre of UAV DACH e.V.

The University of Athens (UoA) will participate in the project through the Pervasive Computing Research Group (p-comp, http://p-comp.di.uoa.gr) part of the Communication Networks Laboratory (CNL – http://cnl.di.uoa.gr) of Department of Informatics and Telecommunications (DIT). CNL was founded in 1994 as a research unit in the DIT. The CNL staff comprises of a number of acknowledged researchers and engineers specialising in the fields of telecommunications, data networks and multimedia applications. During the past years CNL has been actively involved in a number of international projects, funded mainly by the European Commission (e.g., ACTS, IST), as well as national projects, funded by Greek Ministries or other organisations in the area of Mobile/Wireless Communications.

CSEM, Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique SA (Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology), founded in 1984, is a private research and development centre, which has specialized in microtechnology, nanotechnology, microelectronics, systems engineering and communications technologies. It offers its customers and industry partners tailor made innovative solutions based on its technological expertise from applied research. Furthermore, in founding start-ups, it actively contributes to developing Switzerland as an industrial location. To date, a total of 29 such new enterprises with more than 500 employees, have been launched by CSEM. In addition, CSEM has acquired an international dimension by establishing a presence in the Arab Emirates in 2005, and in Brazil in 2007, in order to speed up and encourage the transfer of knowledge and new technologies beneficial to the local economy of these countries. Also, CSEM is part of the Heterogeneous Technology Alliance (HTA), together with CEA (LETI and LITEN), Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics and VTT.

CNIT is a non-profit, university-generated consortium of 37 Italian universities. CNIT brings together member and partner staff and facilities to the aim of coordinating innovation in the field of telecommunications. CNIT aims at promoting and coordinating research in telecommunications; fostering partnerships among industries, operators, public and private research centres; providing training programs, stimulating initiatives of scientific research and divulgation. CNIT research topics are mobile communications, optical satellite and radio-links communications, digital signal processing, telecommunications networks, telematics, intelligent transport systems, remote sensing and radar, television, information theory, multimedia communications, telecommunications security, electromagnetic compatibility, optical and microwave components and circuits, electromagnetic diagnostic, environmental impact of telecom-munications systems, propagation and antennae.

Polícia Judiciária (PJ), the Portuguese Criminal Police, is a higher criminal police body under the Ministry of Justice, supervised by the Public Prosecution Authority. Its assignments are, in general, criminal prevention and investigation, as well as supporting prosecuting and judicial authorities. As a criminal investigation police force, PJ is competent for the prevention and investigation of serious and organized crime.

CYBERLENSE LIMITED (CLS) is a start-up company specialising in cyber security and privacy engineering, based in London, United Kingdom. The company was established in May 2015 by former researchers pursuing the application of their research expertise and innovations in the industrial arena. The company’s portfolio includes software development, IT research, and business consultancy. CLS was established to undertake both theoretic and applied research, shape the development of complex software, and disseminate knowledge by working hand-in-hand with European large industries, SMEs, research centres and universities CLS’s executive team members have a rich track record in developing software, publishing their research in high impact factor venues, attracting research and innovation fund and participating successfully in research and innovation projects.

Romanian Border Police (RBP) is a single authority responsible for border control at all Romanian borders with centralized organization at national, regional and local level. At national (central) level border management is carried out by the General Inspectorate of Border Police (Inspectoratul General al Politiei de Frontiera), (GIBP). It co-ordinates the activity of its subordinated structures and carries out activities of investigation and inquiry of the serious crimes in the field of border related offences such as organized crime, illegal migration and cross-border crime. The GIBP is managed by a General Inspector and three deputies coordinating altogether 12 services directly subordinated to the GIBP. Two main directorates of the GIBP are the Directorate for Surveillance and Control of Border Crossings (DSCBC) and the Directorate for Countering Illegal Migration and Cross-Border Crime. The other GIBP structures are either support ones or specialized in specific related issues.

everis Aerospace, Defense and Security (everis ADS) offers differential solutions integrating innovative technologies developed by them, by the SMEs they invest in and by the partners with whom they have strategic alliances. The company combines the strength and background of everis Group with the flexibility and the adaptive capacities of its technological SMEs. This way, they provide the market with state-of-the-art products and services in areas such as defense, aviation, security, simulation and space.

TEK-AS develops creative disruptive technologies for the information technologies, aerospace and security markets. TEK-AS’s activity is product-driven. Significant investment is dedicated to research activities leading to innovative technologies in close collaboration with our customers, in different fields ranging from communication to autonomous vehicles, from information systems to mobility solutions. Upholding this vision, TEK-AS delivers embedded systems, ad-hoc sensor networks, next-generation communications systems, software defined radio technology, unmanned aerial platforms and intelligent systems to clients in the aerospace and security fields. With subsidiaries in Europe, Asia, the United States and South America, TEK-AS leverages innovation technology ensuring unprecedented advantage to clients and partners throughout the world.