Monitoring what happens at sea helps life run smoothly, both on land and in the water. Marine surveillance can monitor and maintain both the environmental health of our oceans and the security of Europe’s citizens. It can counter threats like accidents, piracy, illegal fishing, ecological disasters and terrorism.
Several agencies have created marine surveillance systems, but there has not been a simple way for EU countries to share this information with one another, leading to duplicated efforts and missed opportunities to access invaluable data.
To make things more efficient, researchers helped develop a Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) so that authorities can exchange maritime information automatically and securely.
Maritime CISE is a voluntary collaborative process that connects existing information sharing systems. EU member states volunteer to share their data and CISE selects the best information to help surveillance authorities plan and react more effectively. This way, CISE aims to reduce threats to European interests, as well as the costs and efforts involved in doing so.
CISE started in 2009, and the system’s development accelerated when a group of researchers came together for the EUCISE 2020 project that ran from 2014 to 2018.
They were asked to create a political, organisational and legal environment to enable information sharing across seven maritime sectors – transport, environmental protection, fisheries control, border control, general law enforcement, customs and defence.
The team created a test bed of surveillance platforms and thoroughly road-tested everything the programme needed to work effectively and enable co-ordination on threats, from technical feasibility, to collaboration, to performance indicators.
The work is considered a crucial milestone in the roadmap of CISE implementation, enabling developing and testing its network, based on existing surveillance systems/networks.
The project has inspired other initiatives. For example, a similar shared surveillance approach is being used to enhance security of the Arctic. The ‘Artificial Intelligence based Virtual Control Room for the Arctic’ (AI-ARC) project will help coast guards and other seafarers use AI to boost safety.