Issue editors: Andreas Kriechbaum-Zabini, James Ferryman

In the last years irregular migration has decreased in Europe. In FRONTEX’s annual risk analysis 2020 risk it is shown that the number of detected illegal border crossings at Europe’s land borders – the area between border control points - is increasing. An essential task for border guards is to detect irregular border crossings by illegal migrants using vehicles; such migrants seek to cross borders in small groups in difficult vegetation such as forests, where the traffickers cannot be detected by current technologies. Solutions are needed to provide border guards with improved situational awareness of border regions including robust detection of people and vehicles, including groups, recognition of abnormal behaviors and prediction of routes of individuals and small groups. To reflect on these developments, the Journal of Defence & Security Technologies (JDST) issues this Call for Papers for an Issue on “Land Border Surveillance, detection and tracking of irregular border crossings – challenges and opportunities”.

Issue editors: Margaret Varga, Valérie Lavigne

The NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) recently organized a multi-national workshop on “Big Data Challenges – Situation Awareness and Decision Support”. The aims of the workshop were to raise awareness of: common and different problems; available and foreseen technologies; capabilities and efforts; and also, to support the development of research collaborations.

The themes of the workshop explored how the availability of big data, as well as technologies to exploit big data, may assist the military in understanding the situations they currently encounter and will encounter, and how these may support them in making better decisions. The challenges for the development and opportunities for the exploitation of Big Data are likely to vary from domain to domain. The workshop was composed of presentations and discussions relating to a broad spectrum of potential (military) domains.

This Issue intends to continue discussing views, challenges, and work on the use of big data to support the military with obtaining situation awareness and informed decision making.

Issue editors: Yantsislav Yanakiev, Giuseppe Vella

This Issue of the Journal of Defence & Security Technologies (JDST) is published by the Bulgarian Defence Institute “Prof. Tsvetan Lazarov,” Sofia, Bulgaria. 
The main focus is on Defense Technology Foresight.
This volume is based on the results achieved in the framework of the European Defence Agency Project „Predictive methodologY for TecHnology Intelligence Analysis“(PYTHIA) carried out in the period 2018-2020.
PYTHIA has received funding from the European Union's Preparatory Action on Defense Research under grant agreement No 800893.
The goal of PYTHIA this project is to design an innovative methodology that will predict the evolution of technologies through the analysis of technological trends. 
The innovative aspect of PYTHIA consists in its global approach. Indeed, the ambition of the project is not limited to only providing a technological forecast, but to evaluate the possible impact of the emerging technologies on the European Defense.
To achieve this goal, a consortium of 8 partners from 6 European countries manage this project by sharing their expertise, including: Engineering (Italy) – project coordinator, Zanasi & Partners (Italy) – scientific technical coordinator, Expert System (France), Hawk Associates Ltd (United Kingdom), Military University of Technology (Poland), ICSA (Intelligence Culture and Strategic Analysis) Foundation (Italy), Romanian National Defense University, Carol I, Bulgarian Defense Institute "Professor Tsvetan Lazarov" – project security officer.
Moreover, the project is supported by 24 stakeholders from 14 European countries.

Issue editors: Nikolai Stoianov, Salvador Llopis 

This issue is open for submissions.

To submit please click here!