The Lieutenant General of the Guardia Civil Support Command, Arturo Espejo and the General Secretary for Innovation of the Ministry of Science and Innovation and President of the Centre for Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI), have presented technological developments that will allow the Guardia Civil to carry out its mission in rural areas with greater efficiency.
This prototype device developed by the companies ESCRIBANO and the UTE VODAFONE/TRC for the Albacete Command, is a revolutionary technological solution for the security of rural areas.
Its development initially presents four functionalities aimed at the control of mass events, detection of marijuana plantations, theft of agricultural machinery or goods of cultural interest and environmental crimes.
Thanks to the joint work of the Guardia Civil, the Centre for Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI) and the companies awarded the Innovative Public Procurement contract – CPI (ESCRIBANO and the UTE VODAFONE/TRC), a revolutionary set of technological solutions have been developed that will allow the Guardia Civil to carry out its mission in rural areas with greater efficiency. All this, the result of an ambitious innovation project that has had a budget of more than 8 and a half million euro (€8,518,400), co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund 2014-2020.
With this prototype, the operational capacities of the units will be potentially increased in the following scenarios:
- Theft of agricultural machinery components and other assets of high economic or cultural value since, thanks to the innovative solutions developed, Guardia Civil agents will be provided with tools for early detection of thefts of high economic or cultural value in rural areas, as well as monitoring of their authors.
- Control of crowded events. These developed solutions will increase the security of attendees by facilitating the activities of the Guardia Civil in the identification of people who may pose a risk to security, the detection and characterisation of anomalous movements of crowds and the location of possible stolen valuables.
- Detection of marijuana plantations since thanks to them, their location will be achieved whether they are located in the open air or if they are covered with plastic in greenhouses.
- Prevention of environmental crimes because they will facilitate the work of the Guardia Civil in the detection of poaching activities, habitat destruction or any other that has a negative impact on the protection of species, the detection, monitoring and prediction of fire behaviour, as well as the location of contaminated areas as a result of illegal dumping, both in soil and water.
Likewise, the different systems developed are not conceived or operated as isolated individual components with a single purpose, but as part of an intelligent comprehensive system that will also allow the generation of information that adds value both for each action scenario and for the whole.
In this way, the capabilities of preventive surveillance, early detection and automatic and intelligent monitoring of criminal activities in each scenario will be increased, using innovative technologies based on the individual or combined use of:
- Unmanned aerial vehicles with different types of detectors, sensors and/or cameras on board.
- Networks of detectors, sensors and/or cameras deployed in terrestrial positions.
- Satellite images.
