A consortium of eight organisations proposes a research project to remove in three years most of the technical barriers which prevent the use of Thermal Infra Red Hyperspectral Imaging technologies, as sensing units integrated into surveillance systems of clandestine weapon development.

In partnership with JRC and King's College London, five SMEs, specialised in the development and use of Hyperspectral data acquisition and processing, will implement ground and airborne experiments, using a prototype sensor unit able to detect gaseous, liquid or solid traces typical of clandestine coordination. This new technology has been developed and patented by ATIS, obtaining detection performances on gases and some solid materials which appear very promising.

The need to detect a whole new spectrum of chemical species requires the adaptation of existing technologies (both hardware and signal processing software) to meet a new set of performances. PEPITE, ACTIMAR and KEYOBS will bring complementary expertise on signal processing, beyond the solutions already implemented by ATIS. The data made available by experiments will be handled, stored and retrieved using the expertise of SPACEBEL.

On the basis of the experimental results, ALCATEL SPACE will perform a preliminary evaluation study of a space borne sensing unit, comparing costs and benefits of such a solution with other techniques available for clandestine weapon surveillance (including commercial satellite imagery).

Exploitation plans of the technology will be proposed by ATIS, which aim at applications for the detection, monitoring and classification of trace gaseous, solid or liquid materials, both for security end-uses but also for other environmental concerns.