Role of partners
A strong consortium
Most organisations and individuals in ENTRANCE have already collaborated through previous successful EU funded projects such as C-BORD, CORE, CONTAIN, EUROSKY and are reuniting their capabilities to build the value chain of NII for effective border controls. A further strength of the consortium is the participation of five practitioners - Border Guards Authorities and/or Customs Authorities - readily engaged to defining the requirements and testing the solutions onsite. Besides technical aspects, the ENTRANCE solution will have been designed by customs, for customs.
Complementary expertise
The ENTRANCE partners combine a range of expertise as briefly described below:
Technology suppliers:
- Research & academia: CEA, the University of Padova and the Ruder Boskovic Institute are technology suppliers from the public research institutes and universities with extensive knowledge and long research track records in inspection range of technologies, nuclear material detection systems and illicit material detection
- SMEs: Arktis Radiation Detectors, Iris Instruments, ETC and CAEN are experts in the technology domains that are relevant for the inspection of containers and large-volume freight
- Large industry: Smiths Detection and Bertin Technologies are major industrial technology providers specialised in security equipment (X-Ray imaging systems and Gamma / neutron detectors)
Practitioners: Ministry of Finance, Croatia, Financial Directorate of the Slovak Republic, National Customs Agency of Bulgaria, Belgian Customs and Excise and the Ministry of Interior, Croatia are Border Guards Authorities or Customs Authorities. Practitioners with expertise on customs’ requirements and challenges related to container inspection at Border Control Points
Experts: Joint Research Center, Center for the Study of Democracy and Michael Doherty Customs and Border Security Services all have expertise in technology assessment, practitioner requirements, ethical and sociological issues
Service provider: ARTTIC handles both the project management and communication and dissemination activities to ensure that the project results deliver a strong impact to relevant stakeholders
Role in the project
Smiths Detection, has an international reputation in developing, manufacturing, maintaining X-ray imaging systems for security and customs applications. Smiths Detection has delivered over 60 000 conventional X-ray systems and more than 500 large volume non-intrusive inspection systems. Smiths Detection (Smiths) is one of five operating divisions of Smiths Group plc (SG) and is a world leader in Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear & Explosive (CBRNE) Detection systems for security and defence.
Smiths Detection is in charge of two specific work packages (WP2 and WP6) and will contribute significantly to several other areas of work and the field trials. It will develop two different technologies for solving the problems of high-density cargo and especially those filled with iron ore. The contribution will include an extension of the work initiated in the C-BORD project, for example material discrimination by de-overlapping and stereoscopy with matrix detectors. Smiths will provide an X-ray system equipped with a 7/4 MeV accelerator for the field trials.