Andromeda Motivation

Border surveillance is a complex mission given the length of European borders and the variety of terrain configuration.

Historically, the Mediterranean region has always been witnessing challenges like migration flows, cross-border crime, persistent natural hazards (forest fires, floods and earthquakes, etc.), which required cross-border and multi-discipline collaboration in order to optimise response actions. Still, there are several threats that prevail in the Maritime and Land borders: piracy, trafficking of drugs, illicit goods, arms proliferation, illegal fishing, environmental crimes and maritime accidents/disasters.

Several efforts have been made in the past and current years to increase the efficiency of surveillance activities via the collection and exchange of land and maritime surveillance information between control authorities – even across national borders. The most important efforts were initially EUROSUR and later on CISE. EUROSUR, the European Border Surveillance System, has the objective of improving the situational awareness and increase reaction capability at external borders the Union's especially its southern maritime and eastern land borders.

In 2010, the European Commission put forward a six-step Roadmap towards the Maritime Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE). The goal was to create a political, organizational and legal environment to enable information sharing across the seven relevant sectors/user communities (transport, environmental protection, fisheries control, border control, general law enforcement, customs and defense) based on existing and also on future surveillance systems/networks with a view to achieve a fully operational CISE by 2021.

ANDROMEDA aims to unlock the full capabilities of the CISE by enhancing the Maritime CISE Model, extending its scope to the Land Surveillance Information Exchange and providing and demonstrating 100% compatible Command & Control, Data Fusion and Decision Support systems.