Announcements


Invitation to Industry - Forecasting changes in the migration flows using Open Sources

2018-08-08

Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, is interested in a “turn-key” service (products or tools) exploiting open sources to forecast migrant flow changes in a geographical context (places, routes, and transit hubs). To explore the state of the art of the market offer on this topic, Frontex will organise a one-day workshop with providers of such a service in Warsaw on 16 October 2018. The purpose of the workshop is to exchange information with companies currently offering and/or developing solutions for this concept.

Frontex wishes to explore the “connection between open source data and migrant flow changes” addressing the possibility to:

  • ­Discover and assess social media sentiment evolution related to migration flows in Third Countries, focusing in transit intentions in predefined time periods;
  • ­Detect places, transit routes and transit hubs, where flow changes occurred, which could be confirmed by the focused use of other sources of information (i.e. high resolution EO imagery);
  • ­Identify positive/ negative sentiment and, if possible, whether the social media posts refer to a legal or illegal activity;
  • ­Retrieve social media content to enhance the situational picture integrating, whenever possible, real-time information (i.e. time and location of migrant boat departure).

Frontex might test any promising solutions that would be identified during the workshop, following a public procurement of the service.

The closing date of the registration is 24 September 2018, 24:00, Warsaw local time.  In the registration form, please include a description of the experience your organisation has with exploitation of open sources, and any ongoing or finished projects, products you may already have in this area.

Please note that the attendance capacity is limited. Participation will be determined on a combination of arrival time of your registration and the relevance of your activities/products for Frontex.

The workshop will take place at Frontex headquarters located at Plac Europejski 6, 00-844 Warsaw, Poland, on 16 October 2018, from 09:00 to 17:00, Warsaw local time.

Participants of the workshop will have to cover their own costs. To express your interest to attend the event you need to register following this link.

For any further information, you are kindly requested to contact the organising team at rdu-technology-assessment@frontex.europa.eu