Preventing and fighting illicit material and dangerous substances postal and courier services flows in EU areas is of top priority. However, ensuring efficiency, speed and continuity in screening and detection tasks remains yet a challenge. Currently, custom, police and courier authorities involve a range of screening systems in place but there is still much to do in terms of detection efficacy and creation of intelligence towards risk and threat identification. On top of that, criminals or smugglers exploit the multitude of flows and easily spot security gaps that allow parcels or letters to be transported within or across EU with relative ease. To overcome these constraints, iFLOWS proposes a unique approach to assist customs, police and postal/courier services in preventing and detecting such crimes by improving operational readiness, enhancing situation awareness, reducing detection time, providing operational efficiency and achieving superior mission performance. iFLOWS will design, develop, integrate, test and validate a novel multi-tier synergistic Toolkit in enhancing intelligence extraction, screening and detection operations of illicit material and hazardous substances within courier and postal flows moving across and within EU borders. iFLOWS works upon these 3 building blocks to deliver a) a tailored to such operations C4I that boosts preparedness and cooperation be-tween police, customs and courier/postal services, b) enhanced Intelligence in terms of threats, risks and suspicious flows and c) novel detection technologies (i.e. THz Scanning system and UWB Scanner) featuring enhanced detection capabilities over a large span of illicit material and substances, which, coupled with advanced image-based feature extraction in combination to legacy systems (e.g. X-Ray and Raman) optimise the detection process without interrupting the postal/courier flows.

In today’s changing climate is of urgent importance to understand the adverse impacts of climate change to the local and regional Arctic natural environments, infrastructures and industries. To this end, Earth Observation (EO) is the way forward, as it is extremely challenging to obtain long-term continuous ground observations. Recent advances in EO sensors, in cloud computing, geographical information systems (GIS) and in the field of socioeconomics provide unique opportunities to promote research and socioeconomic studies in the Arctic. Yet, despite their plethora, EO data are provided in a dispersed and unconnected way through several web platforms and in diverse formats, making their use difficult. EO-PERSIST proposes the development of a single cloud-based system that will allow in a unique way the availability of the collection, management and exploitation of the available EO data suitable to permafrost studies. The system leverages existing services, datasets and novel technologies to: a)create a continuously updated ecosystem with EO datasets suitable for permafrost studies, b)promote methodological advances in permafrost studies by exploiting the huge volume of EO datasets and c)provide indicators directly connected with socioeconomic effects to permafrost dynamics. Experimental analysis will also be carried with the system to showcase its use via five carefully selected and innovative Use Cases, that will serve as Key Performance Indicators of the system. EO-PERSIST brings together staff from academia and industry via a series of carefully-designed secondments, establishing a unique fertile collaborative research and innovation environment to promote pioneering research and socioeconomic studies implementation in the Arctic. A strong inter-sectoral experienced research team, of 5 academic and 6 industrial partners, coming from Greece(3), North Macedonia (1), Finland(1), Sweden(1), Cyprus (1), Poland(1), Romania(2) and Italy(1) constitute the project’s consortium.

The importance of our seas and oceans to the economy and societal well-being is broadly acknowledged. In addition, offshore infrastructure in the form of ports, wind farms, aquaculture facilities, natural gas pipes, etc. has continuously expanded and has become more commonplace in recent years. Activities associated with seabed mapping, monitoring of the health and status of marine habitats, offshore infrastructure inspection, seabed mining and underwater sensing have traditionally been based on the use of crewed support vessels which are expensive to run and have limited endurance. The MERLIN project seeks to exploit long-endurance operational capabilities offered through the use of hydrogen fuel cells and renewable energy installed onboard Unmanned Surface Vessels (USV) and Autonomous Underwater Vessels (AUVs) which are capable of navigating and operating autonomously based on AI algorithms without the need for human intervention. A Mission Remote Control Centre (MRCC) will permit data from the autonomous vessels to be transmitted to base. Conversely, the MRCC will allow the transmission of commands from the supervisor to the robotic vehicles. The vehicles will incorporate advanced surface and underwater grasping capability for the collection of samples, handling, installation and recovery of sensors using custom-built robotic arms. The USV will provide geotagging reference data to the AUVs when they operate underwater and be able to track them during the mission. The USV will be able to navigate from its base to the location of the mission where the AUVs will be released. At the end of the mission the AUVs will dock again with the USV so they can be safely returned to base. The vehicles will be capable of operating independently as well as in combination with support vessels . The demonstration activities include three different high value use cases, including marine habitat monitoring, underwater volcano seabed mapping, and port infrastructure inspection.

Battery-powered AUVs have been used to study the seabed without the requirement of a human operator. Their operational endurance is limited by the available battery charge. Gliders, an AUV subclass, use small changes in their buoyancy to move like a profiling float. By using their wings, gliders can convert the vertical motion to horizontal, propelling themselves forward with very low power consumption. Hence, mission duration can be extended to months and to thousands of kilometers. However, gliders are suited for a particular set of missions involving relatively basic measurements and seabed mapping cannot be performed due to their inherent inability to cruise in a straight line. A surface support vessel is standard practice for launch and recovery of AUVs. The requirement to have a support vessel adds to the overall mission cost. Therefore higher endurance is needed in AUV platforms in order to bring mission costs down and improve the ocean exploration capability. The ENDURUNS project will deliver a step-change in AUV technology by implementing a novel hybrid design power by hydrogen fuel cell. An Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) will support the operation of the AUV, providing geotagging and data transmission capability to and from the Control Centre on shore.

ADACORSA targets to strengthen the European drone industry and increase public and regulatory acceptance of BVLOS (beyond visual line-of-sight) drones, by demonstrating technologies for safe, reliable and secure drone operation in all situations and flight phases. The project will drive research and development of components and systems for sensing, telecommunication and data processing along the electronics value-chain. Additionally, drone lead smart industries with high visibility and place for improvement will be developed which will pave the way for a higher public / industry acceptance of the drone technologies. In particular, ADACORSA will deliver: a) On the component level, functionally redundant and fail-operational radar and LiDAR sensors as well as 3D cameras. In order to reduce risk, time and costs, the project aims to adapt technologies from the automotive sector to the drone market for these components. b) On the system level, hardware and software for reliable sensor fusion and data analytics as well as technologies for secure and reliable drone communication using multipath TCP and registration and identification by developing platforms based on eUICCs/eSIM. c) On an architecture level, fail-operational drone control and investigation a pre-operational Flight Information Management System (FIMS) the integration with CoTS components for Unmanned Air Vehicle Traffic Management System (UTM). Within the project, 35 physical as well as virtual demonstrators of BLVOS, long-range drone flight shall pave the way toward certifiable systems for future integration of drone operations. ADACORSA's innovations will leverage the expertise of a very strong consortium, comprising world renowned industrial (OEMs, Tier-1, Tier-2 and technology providers) and research partners along the complete aviation, semiconductor and also automotive value chains, providing Europe with a competitive edge in a growing drone and drone technologies market.