PROMENADE: Artificial intelligence and big data for improved maritime awareness

Two years of collaboration, 16 European partners and three trial demonstrations – the project PROMENADE has entered the final stages of testing and real-life simulations to finetune the research outcomes. On 22 February, Frontex joined the third trial demonstration and the final workshop of this Horizon 2020 project, which took place in the Greek city of Piraeus.

PROMENADE is a research and innovation project aiming to develop new technologies for border guard authorities, such as a service-based toolkit for automatic vessel detection, tracking and behaviour analysis. Its consortium developed, integrated, and demonstrated in real operational environment 22 different services for border surveillance, based on artificial intelligence and big data, in 5 main areas:

• classification services: vessel detection, classification, route classification, activity classification, vessel geolocation, oil spill detection, vessel route detection, etc.;
• pattern detection services: behaviour analysis, vessel tracking, pattern tracking, rule and non-rule-based pattern detection;
• risk assessment services: risk assessment, risk investigator, risk detections in vessel behaviour;
• data infrastructure: data lake that allows the storage, processing, and distribution in a Big Data environment;
• future state prediction: prediction of vessel movement;

The Hellenic trial demonstration was the third in the PROMENADE trials after the Iberian trials (that took place on the coast of Almeria/Marseille on the Spanish-French border) and the Baltic trials (organized on the coast of Klaipeda, Lithuania), all of them taking place in February 2023. The event in Piraeus gathered practitioners from Greece (Coast Guard), Spain (Ministry of Interior), France (Ministry of Armed Forces), Lithuania (State Border Guard), NATO’s Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) and the European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen) and its trial scenarios focused on irregular migration, drug trafficking, seizure of excise goods, vessel behaviour and oil spills (illegal discharge).

Two scenarios in particular were the focal point of the Hellenic trial: the detection of the abnormal behaviour of vessels and drug trafficking drop off and pick up.

Frontex will continue to participate actively and advise on projects’ various phases, such as tests, trials, and workshops as well as to disseminate relevant information related to the monitored and supported projects