Action for a CISE incident alerting system

The call is expected to foster the uptake of CISE bringing in new participants as well as the implementation and use of new operational services integrated with existing ones. Hence, at the end of the project, it is envisioned that new Member States will be connected to the CISE Network and those services will be used to support the involved authorities in the execution of their standard duties.

In addition, the project is expected to design, develop, implement, and fine tune through test, services that will be at a readiness level suitable for being routinely used in operation beyond the end of the project.

Other expected impacts are:

• New and adapted operational procedures taking into account the new services;
• Enhanced cross-sector and cross-border collaboration within the CISE network.

Stakeholders involved in the use of the services developed are encouraged to continue to support the use of these services in their operational system beyond the closure of the project.​

In the context of the CISE transitional phase, the main objectives of this call for proposals are to enhance the cooperation between public maritime authorities (including European Commission Services and EU Agencies) by promoting the development of at least 2 services at pre-operational phase and to foster the uptake of CISE in view of its operationalisation. The developed services at pre-operational phase should relate to risk and incident alerting services [1] that use CISE for information exchange.

These services are meant to be complementary to information exchanged through the legacy systems of user communities. In no way these services will substitute or replace existing systems and existing legal obligations under European and/or international law.

CISE aims at giving users the possibility to add or to top-up missing information to the information available in their legacy systems. These services should give the possibility to complete information by reaching out to a wider variety of Public Authorities connected to the CISE network.

Proposals should focus on rolling out information services capable of supporting the work of the relevant authorities, addressing at least 3 use cases in the pre-operational environment. It should involve authorities from as many sectors as possible of those identified in the CISE communication [2].

The proposed services should facilitate the work of operators to carry out their tasks in the context of the identified use cases by sharing the needed information, in a timely manner, in their operational system (legacy). The automatic sharing of information on the selected services, should aim at reducing the workload at the operational level and further enhancing the decision-making process at tactical level. Therefore, the exchange of information shall be automatized connecting the legacy systems of the authorities involved (no simulator or dedicated client) and the actual use of the received information by the receiving legacy system should be proven.

Applicants should explain in their proposal how the implementation of the targeted activities will result in concrete and measurable results within the project's duration. Proposals should demonstrate how added value is provided to existing systems.

The implemented services addressing use cases should be piloted for at least 6 months in the operational network, targeting real events. In this regard the applicant should design an operational report where events and/or target activities should be documented.

[1] The “incident alerting service” refers to incidents occurring on board vessels or any other type of maritime asset. The “risk service” aims at harmonizing the interpretation of the risks by the different authorities involved in CISE.

[2] COM(2010) 584 final on a Draft Roadmap towards establishing the Common Information Sharing Environment for the surveillance of the EU maritime domain.

The project should use as many existing CISE Nodes as possible. Furthermore, the project should seek for the engagement of new stakeholders. Should the installation of new nodes in the network be required, the CISE team (i.e. EMSA and JRC) will provide the needed technical guidance.

All the services developed during this project should be in compliance with the specifications of the CISE data and service model [1].To facilitate the uptake of the new services within the CISE community and to facilitate the maintenance and the interoperability with the existing CISE adaptors, each new adaptor should be specified and documented.

The services should be shared (consumed and provided) in the operational context, therefore addressed through standard operating procedures by duties officers in the stakeholder’ situational centre, for at least 6 months. The operational results of this activity shall be reported by an operational report, highlighting which operations CISE contributed to target or events that CISE contributed to detect.

Additionally, the proposal shall include a final demonstration exercise, which shall use a combination of the services developed in the frame of the project and the services already existing in the CISE network. The exercise shall be used to show and present the new services implemented to the whole CISE community. The exercises should demonstrate the added value of the information exchange in the operational selected scenarios.

Projects must undertake at least the following core activities as part of the project implementation:

• Analysis of the Use cases selected;
• Adaptation of the operational procedures and upgrading of the involved legacy systems to automatize the use of the newly available information and definition of relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs);
• Design, development, and operation of the CISE adaptors required to provide and consume the information shared through the services;
• Signing of CISE cooperation agreement to enable information exchange;
• Deployment and operation of the pre-operational services for 6 months and doing an ex-post evaluation an analysis reporting on the results and achievements;
• Organization and performing a demonstration event for the CISE community.

In addition, applicants should include the following complementary activity to support the above core activities:

Establishment of a Steering Committee (SC) to ensure the overall strategic steering of the project. The SC should comprise of representatives of the relevant Maritime sectors, as well as the involved beneficiaries. The Commission (JRC, MARE, and MOVE), EMSA and/or CINEA may participate in an observer capacity only.

[1] http://emsa.europa.eu/cise-documentation/cise-data-model-1.5.3/