As part of the CLOSEYE project dissemination strategy, the Guardia Civil of Madrid hosted on 30 September the first ´CLOSEYE VIP Day´.

CLOSEYE is an FP7 European Commission project that aims to provide an operational and technical framework that increases situational awareness (SA) and improves the reaction capability of authorities surveying the external borders of the EU.

To that end CLOSEYE has been structured into three phases to last 38 months in all. The first phase identified user needs, available solutions and the validation strategy. This phase ended in July 2014 with the selection, via competitive call, of the companies to provide the solutions to be tested; GMV was chosen as supplier of one of them.

GMV’s solution comprises an integrated command, control and coordination system rolled out in different centers and resources both of the Spanish Guardia Civil and the Portuguese Guardia Nacional Republicana. This system incorporates various pre-existing information sources plus a series of groundbreaking sensors, providing the capacity of distributing information between the various nodes in different countries and agencies as well as coordination of their resources.

The second phase, now underway, will validate the initially designed solutions in real operational scenarios during joint operations run by Frontex. Once these validations have been completed, the project will move on to the third and last results-assessment phase, establishing the type approval of services and systems of similar characteristics for their supply to the rest of Europe’s security corps and forces.

The ´CLOSEYE VIP Day´ agenda included diverse presentations by representatives of the European Commission and project partners and contractors plus an exhibition area showcasing the main developments carried out in CLOSEYE. This gave GMV the chance to explain the benefits of its solution to all participants of the day.

The event was formally opened by the General Director of Guardia Civil, Mr. Arsenio Fernández de Mesa, and closed by the Spanish Minister of Interior, Mr. Jorge Fernández Díaz. Other key participants were representatives of the European Commission, several border surveillance authorities from different member states and representatives of various organizations and security corps and forces.