SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 29 April 2013
The Workshop on Innovation in Border Control 2013 (WIBC 2013),
co-organized by Frontex Research and Development Unit, the Joint
Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, and the National
Center for Border Security and Immigration (BORDERS) of the University
of Arizona, is soliciting both research and “industrial practice and
experience” papers.
The aim of the Workshop is to bring together academic researchers, practitioners, and industry to:
- discuss innovative solutions to current and future challenges in border control (including border surveillance),
- present the latest results of research in the field of border control,
- evaluate current applications,
- identify next steps toward bringing solutions to fruition, and
- disseminate information on ongoing border security-related research projects and initiatives.
Possible topics of the papers are:
1. Detection, identification and authentication
CHALLENGES: (A) An ever-increasing number of people coming to the EU
poses a challenge of having less time for the entire process of person
and document authentication and/verification, and efficiently detecting
the “risky” ones, which should undergo a more thorough check; (B)
Various types of insignificant-in-size maritime means are used by
third-country nationals to enter into the EU in an irregular manner.
Timely detection and classification of such means, in particular
differentiating between suspicious and legitimate ones, poses a serious
challenge.
• Access control: authentication of documents, people and vehicles
• Risk assessment of travelers (prior and upon arrival)
• Deception detection
• Modelling and optimization of the border control processing chain
• Detection and risk-level classification of both large and small (fast) boats in maritime environment
• Detection of persons attempting to enter illegally
• Long range maritime positive identification of facilitators in poor optical conditions
• Psycho-physiological and behavioural detection of risk
• Small and wide land area intruder detection
2. Communication
CHALLENGE: An increasing field-cooperation between Border Guard
authorities of (neighbouring) countries is often hindered by
non-compatible mobile secure communication networks that could be used
to exchange data of various kind (videos, images, text) in a
straightforward and efficient manner.
• Efficient transfer of high volume of data, including video and
images, from mobile (manned or unmanned) platforms to end users, and
vice versa from operations centres to field assets
• Ergonomic and user-friendly wireless mobile communication tools
• Interconnection of secure communication networks of border guard
authorities in neighbouring countries, including technical and legal
aspects
3. Information sharing and interoperability
CHALLENGE: An ever-growing requirement to exchange border
security-related information of various kind at the EU-level poses a
challenge in terms of: (a) making existing systems interoperable, (b)
willingness to share information “across the sectors and borders”, (c)
having a common understanding of the content to be shared.
• Platforms and systems for secure exchange of information
• Collaboration across cultures, or the effects of culture and legal and organizational constraints on information sharing
• Techniques to facilitate the exchange of information between non interoperable information systems
• Integrated visa/immigration facilities control systems
• Interoperability for information exchange: protocols, schemes,
ontologies, topologies, semantic translations and common definitions of
content
4. Information acquisition, fusion and utilisation
CHALLENGE: The ever-growing amount of heterogeneous border
security-related data stemming from different sources of varying
reliability makes it difficult to efficiently process, analyse, fuse and
convert it into actionable knowledge.
• Real-time and near real-time text/data mining methods for processing vast amount of heterogeneous data
• Techniques for data/information fusion (text, video, images, etc.) in real or close to real time
• Trend analysis, pattern detection, cross-analysis of databases, optimisation analysis
• Utilisation of new sources of information (e.g., open sources) for
intelligence gathering and situational awareness (e.g., online news,
social media, forums, deep web), including assessment of their quality,
usefulness, reliability, and techniques to analyze them
• Usability of new type of information in the border security-related decision making process
• Intelligence-based risk assessment, threat classification and vulnerability assessment models
5. Technology impact, acceptance and integration
CHALLENGE: Various new technologies with border control application
potential are emerging, however, their integration into the border
control processing chain poses administrative, technical, societal,
privacy and human-machine optimisation issues.
• Assessment of user acceptance
• Data Protection, Fundamental rights and social impacts of use of technology at the border
• Analysis of factors that may hinder introduction of new technologies (legal, organizational, societal)
• Ergonomic impacts of use of technology at the border
• Human-system optimization
• Methods for diffusing and integrating new technology
• Comparison of technology solutions (opportunity/risk analysis)
• Modelling, simulation and training capabilities for border control (virtual environments)
The research event will be co-located with the European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference (http://www.eisic.eu/) and will take place in Uppsala (Sweden) on 13-14 August 2013.
For more information on the call for papers and the event, please refer to the following link: http://wibc2013.org/index.html