Contact us
projects

MARCONNECT

Published in Regulatory Frameworks

security privacy artificial intelligence
A ― A

Making Europe safer through connected vessels and real-time intelligence

Europe’s vast maritime domain is essential for the Union’s security, trade, and prosperity, yet it faces growing challenges in situational awareness and border protection.
Increasing maritime traffic, illicit activities, and geopolitical tensions make sea surveillance ever more complex, while traditional systems – such as AIS, patrol vessels, and coastal radar – remain costly, fragmented, and limited in coverage.

A new vision for maritime surveillance

MARCONNECT introduces the Vessel-Connected Services (VCS), an innovative solution that transforms civilian vessels into active nodes of an integrated real-time maritime surveillance network.
By securely and voluntarily sharing their outward-looking sensor data (such as radar or sonar) with Coast Guard Authorities, civilian vessels become valuable assets for enhancing maritime situational awareness.
In return, vessel owners gain access to customised digital services and real-time connectivity, creating a collaborative and sustainable ecosystem.

Key challenges

  • Incentivisation – identifying concrete benefits to encourage voluntary data sharing;
  • Trust and privacy – ensuring ownership, security, and GDPR compliance;
  • Economic sustainability – enabling affordable real-time data sharing via satellite communication.

Project objectives

MARCONNECT aims to leverage the potential of civilian vessels’ onboard sensors as reliable data sources for maritime surveillance systems, strengthening EU border management and external security through improved information exchange at both tactical and strategic levels.
The expected impact is significant: extended maritime surveillance coverage, enhanced capability to detect and address threats, and a strengthened network of existing intelligence services.
The project promotes cooperation among authorities, industry, and citizens, while providing the private sector with aggregated and anonymised data to improve safety and operational efficiency at sea.

CyberEthics Lab. is involved in the project with the goal of ensuring that the development and implementation of MARCONNECT solutions are ethical, sustainable, and compliant with European standards.
Its contribution focuses on analysing the social, legal, and ethical impacts, safeguarding personal data protection, and fostering the social acceptability of the proposed technologies.
Through research activities, stakeholder consultation, and the definition of dedicated guidelines, CyberEthics Lab. ensures that MARCONNECT operates transparently, respects fundamental rights, and aligns with principles of responsibility and trust.

Thanks to an experienced consortium composed of maritime authorities, law enforcement agencies, enterprises, SMEs, and research centres, MARCONNECT aims to transform Europe’s maritime security landscape, turning the civilian fleet into an active part of a connected, intelligent, and resilient ecosystem for safer and more sustainable seas.

Service involved

Ethics assessment of technology
We help our clients and partners in the process of critical analysis to examine the effects that the introduction and use of a technology may have on human rights, society, and the environment. This is a complex process that requires a systematic view and consideration of how technology might affect people and society at large in the short and long term. The ethical impact of technology is therefore crucial when developing and deploying new technologies, in order to mitigate the negative effects and maximise the benefits, and to enable developers, organisations and policy makers to make informed decisions. In this assessment, we assist our clients and partners to consider all relevant factors; there are several methodologies and approaches used to assess the ethical impact of technologies, including:
  • Privacy impact analysis: this type of analysis assesses the effects of technology on the privacy of individuals and their personal information. It considers the risks of monitoring and tracking, the consequences of possible data breaches and the security measures needed to protect users' privacy.
  • Social impact assessment: this type of analysis evaluates the effects of technology on society and the economy in general, considering impacts on unemployment, social equality, access to education and health, quality of life and environmental sustainability.
  • Ethical impact assessment: This type of analysis assesses the effects of technology on society's morals and values, considering impacts on social justice, accountability, transparency, human dignity and individual freedom.
  • Life cycle analysis: This type of analysis assesses the environmental impacts of technology throughout its life cycle, from production to use and end of life.
Ethical impact assessment of technologies therefore requires a multidisciplinary evaluation involving technology experts, ethics experts, legal experts, environmental experts and other stakeholders.
Social acceptance of technologies assessment
Connected, disruptive technologies permeate all aspects of our daily lives and pose challenges to the real foundation of human rights, such as the right to privacy or the freedom of speech. One could say that human values such as trust, accountability, and dignity are mutually influenced by the social acceptance of technologies. We support our clients to conceive a novel way of aligning the thus-far divergent concepts of sustainability, ethics impact, and technological innovation. By combining these three concepts, we respond to the need of a socially responsible innovation ecosystem by developing a tailored methodology for assessing users’/citizens’ social acceptance of technologies, a fundamental driver for technology market adoption. Our social acceptance framework includes six fundamental dimensions over which social acceptability (i.e. perception, motivation, trust, awareness, capacity enabling, and accountability) is measured and assessed through a two-step approach based on an online Sentiment Analysis (SA) – to create structured and actionable knowledge from the web – and the engagement of our client’s stakeholders (e.g. relevant target groups, associations of citizens, domain operators, decision makers, etc.) for the technology co-creation and communication regarding its social acceptance.