Every year a large number of visitors enter the European Union (EU) by cars, buses, trains or ships through land-border crossing points or sea ports bringing significant economic benefits; in particular, 9% of Europe’s GDP comes from tourism. This trend is set to continue, as Europe further considers visa liberalization agreements in a bid to sustain their competitive stance in the global tourism market. This will create major implications on the security and border management in the EU, as well as diminishing the Quality of Experience for passenger travel.

Existing directives for controlling border crossing is to conduct checks using biometric data in conjunction with VIS (Visa Information Systems), as specified in the Schengen Border Code. However, current biometric systems rely on one mode of biometric data, that can at times can lead to false identification, in particular under uncontrolled conditions during live sample acquisition. Moreover, the current crop of scanning devices are limited in coverage and typically have fixed links, thus confining the range of border control applications and compromising the comfort of passengers. We aim to go beyond and propose an innovative passenger-centric biometric system that authenticates “on the fly”. We combine the scientific field of wireless security, biometric recognition and data fusion to develop a secure and wireless multimodal biometric scanning device for passenger verification targeting land and sea border control applications.

The research approach is the basis for a RISE training action that we refer to as eBORDER, that is foreseen to enhance both the career potential of staff members and innovation capacity at the institutional level. In this context, this action brings together key players from industry and academia with complementary expertise on security, biometrics, data fusion and practical experimentation to train staff by research through intersectorial and international staff exchanges.