EU wants to use drones to monitor maritime borders
SUNNY is the acronym of project Smart Unattended Airborne Sensor Network for Detection of Vessels Used for Cross Border Crime and Irregular Entry (SUNNY). The project received green light from the European Commission at the beginning of the year, and on 30 May it will be presented in a workshop at the Sea Forum prior to eventually being implemented in the Portuguese beaches. At the Workshop, it will be possible to know in detail what Portugal will be doing in this project that will use unmanned aerial vehicles in order to monitor the maritime coast.
The Portuguese Ministry of Defence and INESC TEC are two of the 18 participants from several EU countries involved in the project. According to a press release by INEC TEC, the goal with project SUNNY is to prepare a new European border surveillance system (EUROSUR). During the research stage, priority will be given to interoperability and to the use of low-cost technologies that make it possible to detect and locate vessels used by illegal immigrants and drug traffickers.
The project and the respective tests will be conducted for 42 months. Three technological goals have already been established: 1) developing a sensor network for drones, which can alternate between focused view and large fields of vision; 2) developing light sensors capable of operating in scenarios where light is abundant or scarce, or under different weather conditions; 3) and lastly testing protocols for the wireless networks 802.11a/g/n, 802.11p, DVB-T2, Mobile WiMAX, LTE, Wi-Fi@700MHz.
Parallel to the research conducted at the labs, there is a legal issue that needs to be taken care of before the unmanned vehicles start monitoring the coast: today, drones only fly in certain air spaces (air spaces not used by civil and military aircrafts). Therefore, drones can only be used in maritime surveillance after the authorities reach a consensus on how that air space will be shared by both manned and unmanned vehicles.
According to INESC TEC’s press release, when talking about the main technical challenges of using drones for maritime surveillance, Rory Doyle, manager of project SUNNY, stated that «the scale and the geographical distance of some borders, both on land and in the sea, represent a complex challenge for national authorities. This challenge is exacerbated by the lack of human resources available to deal with these tasks and to achieve the required levels of efficiency. By improving the sensors and the capacity to transmit data, as well as the processing of data in real time, project SUNNY will make it possible to overcome these challenges».
