Marsur Ready for Action

The Maritime Surveillance (Marsur) project, encompassing seventeen European Union Member States plus Norway, has reached an operational level of maturity, the European Defence Agency (EDA) says in a release.

One of the longest-running projects undertaken by the EDA, Marsur is a technical solution that allows dialog between European maritime information systems, with an aim to improve the common “recognised maritime picture” by facilitating exchange of operational maritime information and services such as ship positions, tracks, identification data, chat or images.

The interface is installed in each participating Navy’s operational headquarters. A key characteristic of the Marsur network is that there is no central EU component that collects and distributes information. Each Member State is responsible for correlating its own data with the data received from other countries and for boosting the services within the community.

Claude-France Arnould, EDA Chief Executive, said: “Marsur is a great example of efficient Pooling & Sharing of existing capabilities. The project has now reached the point where it is ready to be used by European navies.”

Marsur is designed to become the potential “military layer” of the wider Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) project led by the European Commission. Marsur could work in conjunction with other “systems of systems” to ensure efficient interaction with other European maritime security stakeholders and also in support of CSDP missions.

The Marsur project was formally launched in September 2006 by 15 Member States. It was first tested in June 2011 when six countries conducted an initial networking demonstration in Brussels.

Press Release