The GeneGIS GI Italian GIS for monitoring European coasts and borders

OBJECTIVES

To provide Frontex with GIS tools and specialised personnel to monitor European Union coasts and borders

DEVELOPMENT

GeneGIS was selected as one of the 3 European companies (and the only Italian one) authorised to provide Frontex with GIS services, under a 4-year framework contract.

Frontex is the European coast and border agency that monitors and manages the European Union’s external borders, coordinating the pooled resources provided by the national authorities.

CHARACTERISTICS

The Frontex Situation Centre (FSC) is responsible for on-going border monitoring, receiving “almost real-time” data from a variety of sources and producing analytical results in various forms, predominantly spatial analyses.

Geographical information systems (GIS) play an important role at Frontex. Activities such as GIS application planning, development and maintenance, supply of mapping services, spatial data processing and interfacing with external geographical resources are considered crucial for an agency whose job is border control.

The Frontex GIS system uses ESRI technology, with a GIS architecture based on the ArcGIS SOA framework.

The GIS services cover use of highly qualified personnel for training courses, updating, help desks and user support, as well as supply of GIS activities such as:

• support for Business Units, with daily spatial data-related activities;
• maintenance of Frontex GIS systems and applications;
• GIS application design and development, in line with the ESRI development roadmap, to meet the requirements of the Business Units;
• integration of existing and planned GIS services with Frontex systems;
• development of spatial analysis tools based on available data;
• interoperability of geographical data sourced from a variety of transnational systems;
• management of confidential data and spatial analyses;
• extension of the scalability of the systems and their maintenance;
• unification of security measures, specifically of the authentication and authorisation measures between Frontex systems and the GIS;
• sharing of information between Frontex and other bodies through analysis tools operating at various levels;
• expansion of the role of mobile applications in spatial analysis;
• integration of real-time GIS data flows from remote devices and/or sensor networks.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

GeneGIS GI has specific expertise in the development of GIS tools for geographical and analytical territory management. It provides knowhow covering many different technologies and a unique ability to collect, analyse and integrate geospatial data from a variety of sources.

It also has extensive experience in collaboration with national government agencies.