Simulation-based UAS Swarm Selection for Monitoring and Detection of Migrant Border Crossings

The European migration crisis reached critical levels in 2015 due to a major influx of migrants taking the journey across the Mediterranean to Italy, Greece, and other European coasts. Migration flow rates across the Mediterranean have dropped in recent years, but fatalities have increased and border pressure is still high. Recent operations by local governments, international agencies, and NGO organizations have saved many lives and improved data collection practices, yet they have not been fully successful in responding to the high volume of travel and unexpected rate spikes in migrant trips. Different Operational Constructs and asset strategies have been studied resulting in relevant organizations investing in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for monitoring and detection. However, many questions about the most effective deployment of these assets still remain. This study is centered on the development of a modeling and simulation environment, as well as a decision support tool for conducting system-of-systems comparisons of UAS swarm and surface fleet asset combinations. The environment is an agent-based simulation built in the In-House tool Janus, which leverages the NASAWorld-Wind SDK. The simulation tool and dashboard provide a trade-off environment for parametric analysis of swarm capabilities. A case study is performed for operations by the Italian Coast Guard off the coast of Libya. Results confirm the success of implementing UAS and coordinated swarm systems. Further analysis examines the trade-off of mission effectiveness and cost, with consideration of the resilience and robustness of the system-of-systems

Barriers to ecological restoration in Europe:expert perspectives

Abstract Ecological restoration is key to counteracting anthropogenic degradation of biodiversity and to reducing disaster risk. However, there is limited knowledge of barriers hindering the wider implementation of restoration practices, despite high-level political priority to halt the loss of biodiversity. In Europe, progress on ecological restoration has been slow and insufficient to meet international agreements and comply with European Union Nature Directives. We assessed European restoration experts' perceptions on barriers to restoration in Europe, and their relative importance, through a multiple expert consultation using a Delphi process. We found that experts share a common multi-dimensional concept of ecological restoration. Experts identified a large number of barriers (33) to the advancement of ecological restoration in Europe. Major barriers pertained to the socio-economic, not the environmental, domain. The three most important being insufficient funding, conflicting interests among different stakeholders, and low political priority given to restoration. Our results emphasize the need to increase political commitment at all levels, comply with existing nature laws, and optimize the use of financial resources by increasing funds for ecological restoration and eradicate environmentally harmful subsidies. The experts also call for the integration of ecological restoration into land-use planning and facilitating stakeholders' collaboration. Our study identifies key barriers, discusses ways to overcome the main barriers to ER in Europe, and contributes knowledge to support the implementation of the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the EU 2030 Restoration Plan in particular