The following projects have investigated the security domain over the past years. Other examples of projects can be found in the project database available on this website.
LIMES
LIMES (Land and Sea Monitoring for Environment and Security) focused on the development of applications and services relating to security, applying innovative solutions based on Earth Observation systems and satellite Communication and Positioning technologies.
LIMES addressed three main groups of services:
- Maritime Surveillance: monitoring of vessel and cargo movements over coastal and open ocean areas. The services include Open, Coastal Water and Sensitive Cargo surveillance. They combine Synthetic Aperture Radar with other monitoring systems (e.g. AIS)
- Land and Infrastructure Surveillance: Land Border Monitoring, Critical Infrastructure Surveillance, support to Event Planning and to Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) monitoring. The services are based on the capacity of Very High Resolution satellites, used in conjunction with medium to high resolution data and aerial imagery
- Humanitarian Relief and Reconstruction: Risk Analysis and Disaster Preparedness (e.g. population distribution monitoring, water resource monitoring), Humanitarian Crisis Operational Support (e.g. Damage Assessment), Reconstruction Planning and Monitoring.
LIMES was a 42 months integrated project with an estimated total cost of EUR 21 Millions. The project was co-funded by the European Commission within the 6th Framework Programme.
For more information, please visit the LIMES website
GMOSS
GMOSS was a network of excellence that aimed at integrating Europe’s civil security research so as to acquire and nourish the autonomous knowledge and expertise that Europe needs to develop and maintain an effective capacity for global monitoring using satellite earth observation. The science and technology encompassed within the network included:
- Generic methods, algorithms and software needed for the automatic interpretation and visualization of imagery (e.g. feature recognition, change detection and visualisation)
- Specific science and technology needed to provide effective monitoring of international treaties (e.g. proliferation of weapons of mass destruction), better estimates of static and dynamic populations on a global scale, better monitoring of infrastructure and borders and rapid remote assessments of damage
- Investigations of present and future threats to security and the needs for exchange of information between stakeholders during crises.
GMOSS was funded by the European Commission.
For more information, please visit the GMOSS website
MARISS
MARISS aimed at characterising the added value from combining information derived from satellite based Earth Observation with conventional data streams such as AIS, coastal radar, maritime patrol aircraft and intelligence sources for maritime border control and maritime situation awareness.
MARISS focuses on two types of service:
- Near real time traffic monitoring of vessel movements (vessel detection in open areas vessel tracking at sea borders)
- Strategic monitoring for anomaly detection and threat characterisation (presence or absence or abnormal speed, heading, size or number of ships)
MARISS has been funded by the European Space Agency.