For the past few years, Europe has experienced some major changes at its surrounding territories and in adjacent countries which provoked serious issues at different levels. The European Community faces a number of challenges both at a political and at a tactical level. Irregular migration flows exerting significant pressure to the relevant authorities and agencies that operate at border territories. Armed conflicts, climate pressure and unpredictable factors occurring at the EU external borders, have increased the number of the reported transnational crimes. Smuggling activity is a major concern for Eastern EU Borders particularly, as monitoring the routes used by smugglers is being hindered by mountainous, densely forested areas and rough lands aside with sea or river areas. Due to the severity and the abrupt emergence of events, the relevant authorities operate for a long-time interval, under harsh conditions, 24 hours a day. NESTOR aims to demonstrate a fully functional next generation holistic border surveillance system providing pre-frontier situational awareness beyond maritime and land border areas following the concept of the European Integrated Border Management. NESTOR long-range and wide area surveillance capabilities for detection, recognition classification and tracking of moving targets (e.g. persons, vessels, vehicles, drones etc.) is based on optical, thermal imaging and Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum analysis technologies fed by an interoperable sensors network including stationary installations and mobile manned or unmanned vehicles (aerial, ground, water, underwater) capable of functioning both as standalone, tethered and in swarms. NESTOR BC3i system will fuse in real-time border surveillance data combined with web and social media information, creating and sharing a pre-frontier intelligent picture to local, regional and national command centers in AR environment being interoperable with CISE and EUROSUR.

The emergence of large drone systems that can be integrated with intelligent coordination technology has enabled Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) concepts that are poised to revolutionize a broad range of domains including transport (including logistics), and climate adaptation. Nevertheless, despite commendable global initiatives, Southeast Europe is facing challenges and delays in adopting and implementing AAM. In this context, we introduce EUSOME with the mission to propel the AAM R&I ecosystem in this part of Europe, addressing specific regional challenges arising from its distinctive geographical characteristics. Evidently, the region would heavily benefit from the development and adoption of a transformative transportation solution that has the potential to eradicate traffic congestion and provide a transformative climate adaptation solution to a heavily stressed ecosystem. Nevertheless, the incorporation of AAM presents regulatory complexities and lacks a driving force in terms of R&I in AAM, partly due to the absence of a cohesive, open R&I infrastructure and adequate specialized mentoring programs. The proposed EUSOME Excellence Hub endeavors to tackle these challenges head-on, assuming a pivotal role in establishing AAM as an integral component of the transportation landscape in the region. The consortium consists of experts across the whole AAM spectrum, from cutting-edge research departments, aircraft manufacturing, civil aviation authorities, relevant public agencies, experts in translating research into innovation, and representatives of the public society. This partnership enables EUSOME to deliver a diversified open R&I infrastructure, covering all needs within the AAM spectrum, a regional masterplan for the adoption of EASA’s recommendations on AAM, and a comprehensive mentoring, training, and service provider program for entities (businesses, public agencies, etc.) desiring to enter the AAM domain.

The proposed CoE envisions to upgrade the existing ERATOSTHENES Centre of the Cyprus University of Technology into an inspiring environment for conducting basic and applied research and innovation in the areas of the integrated use of remote sensing and space-based techniques for monitoring the environment. Earth Observation is a must to better observe, understand, protect, monitor, and predict environmental parameters in land, water and air. Earth observation includes, among others, technological solutions including satellite observation, navigation and positioning systems. Satellite observation and remote sensing is the major focal point of the Centre and in the proposed CoE will be used in an integrated manner with other techniques and geospatial tools. Earth observation data are the key factors in Earth environmental programs in order to assess the current information of the environment, inform models, understand relationships among Earth processes, support decision making e.g., toward sustainability and involve stakeholders more effectively in environment decision-making. Earth observation has, so far, made sustainability a reality and it will continue to do so as more research is continuously done and technology improves. Climate change, air and water quality, natural hazards, floods, earthquakes, fires, erosion, landslides and other phenomena are some of the factors that need to be taken into consideration in several environmental studies, both at a national as well as at a regional level. Indeed, Cyprus with its unique geographical position, can support satellite Earth Observation programmes in these areas, as well as their respective calibration and validation aspects. The project is fully aligned with the Smart Specialization Strategy of Cyprus (S3Cy) in many areas, significantly enhancing the impact of the targeted regional and national investments, namely, Environment and ICT, as explained below.

The project will upgrade the Computation-based Science and Technology Research Center of The Cyprus Institute (CyI) into a Centre of Excellence in Simulation and Data Science (SIMDAS) in Cyprus by teaming it with the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ). Local partners are three public institutions as holders and providers of key data, the Departments of Antiquities, and Meteorology, and the Nicosia General Hospital, and two SMEs, Hyperion Systems Engineering, and SignalGeneriX connecting the center directly to commercial applications. During Phase-1 a comprehensive business plan for the six-year development of the center will be prepared with a detailed research, innovation and educational roadmap, governance structure, outreach and sustainability plan. Outreach and dissemination activities will engage the research communities, governmental institutions, and industry. The long-term vision of the SIMDAS project to be realized in Phase-2 revolves around five themes: i) Simulation and data science fundamentals, tools and services: Develop methodologies, tools and services, including mathematical modeling, scalable data analytics and simulations algorithms, statistics, data management, mining, security and visualization, under a Transversal Lab. ii) Simulation and data-driven research: Enable scientific breakthroughs in the key areas of Digital Cultural Heritage, Health and Life Sciences, Solar Energy, Earth System Science and Physical Sciences. iii) Government and Industry: Pursue applications of tangible innovation potential in partnership with public and private institutions utilizing the industry expertise and structures of FZJ. iv) Education: Expand graduate educational and training programs in SIMDAS. v) Infrastructure: Design and build the knowledge environment and infrastructure for a sustainable operation and provisioning of computing and data-intensive services to the broader user communities, and promote the science hub role of CyI in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Maritime disasters in recent years are a stark reminder of the imperative need for timely and effective evacuation of large passenger ships during emergency. The Lynceus2Market project addresses this challenge through delivering a revolutionary operational system for safe evacuation based on innovative people localisation technologies. The system consists of: 1) Localisable life jackets that can provide passenger location in real-time during emergency 2) Smart smoke detectors that also act as base stations of an on-board localisation system 3) Innovative localisable bracelets able to send activity data to the emergency management team 4) Low cost fire and flooding escalation monitoring sensor notes 5) novel mustering handheld devices for automatic identification and counting of passengers during evacuation 6) Smart localisable cabin key cards 7) Intelligent decision support software able to fuse all localisation, activity and disaster escalation data to provide an integrated real-time visualisation, passenger counting and evacuation decision support 8) Innovative shore or ship-launched Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for localising people in the sea in short time and assisting search and rescue operations when accident occurs in extreme weather, during the night or in a remote location 9) Low-cost rescue-boat mounted radars for people localisation in the vicinity of the boat. The proposed project is based on the promising results developed in the FP7 LYNCEUS project where the innovative technologies were tested in lab and in small scale pilots. Lynceus2Market brings together European global players in the field, such as cruise ship owners, operators, ship builders, maritime equipment manufacturers, a classification society, industry associations and important technology organisations with the aim to implement the first market replication of these technologies and products. The Lynceus2Market will create significant impact by saving passenger lives during maritime accidents.