I527-290 ESRIF Final Report (WEB).indd - European Commission

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With the aim of covering the three stages of SA – perception, comprehension and projection – we will go through the diff erent
elements that contribute to recognise, monitor, prevent and respond to threats.
7.2.1. Risks and challenges
7.2.1.1 Surveillance
The observation and monitoring of movements, activities and behaviours from a distance or by evaluation of electronic
information, data and traffi c records is very useful to law enforcement for the prevention of criminal acts. Technologies for
integrity-preserving surveillance need to be developed and adapted.
There is a particular need for fi xed and mobile robust automated surveillance systems to meet increasing surveillance requirements
with respect to coverage and quality. A distributed self-organising sensor network with sensing and communication capabilities
to be spread in selected areas is needed to improve related security information to protect the citizens.
Sensor architecture capabilities and the selective use of surveillance sensors and systems - be it long-distance (e.g. digital/
thermal imaging) or short-distance (e.g. terahertz, biometric) - depend on the goals, the relevant scenarios and the decisiontasks.
Ethical issues and full respect for privacy, liberty and civil rights are aspects that cannot be neglected in all present and
future technological developments. A balance must be achieved between the privacy rights of citizens and the need to
protect Europe and its citizens against threats.
Analysis of the challenges and required surveillance capabilities by diff erent mission areas has been analysed by WG 7.
Security as a form of protection involves a set of procedures or measures in relation to relevant scenarios to identify, review and
evaluate adequate responses to anticipated risks. In the ESRIF context the analysis of risks and challenges within the diff erent
mission areas clearly showed that there are commonalities allowing the recognition of key challenges for surveillance. Those
include the need for automated surveillance and permanent monitoring by using multi sources surveillance at borders and
tools for heterogeneous data fusion as well as the interoperability of systems and sharing of data sources. Moreover, the use of
space based sensors (optical and SAR imagery) will be fundamental to a wide spectrum of applications.
The description and reasoning per mission area is summarised in Table 1.
Table 1: Risks and challenges for surveillance
ESRIF FINAL REPORT - PART 2 • Working Group: Situation Awareness and the Role of Space