Situational awareness, information exchange and operational control for civilian EU missions

The European Union conducts a common security and defence policy (CSDP) that follows an integrated approach to external conflict and crisis. One means of the CSDP are external civilian missions, in some cases operating with military missions in the same operational environments. In order to better support the conduct of civilian missions, a Horizon 2020 project was awarded to propose design options for a ""Situational Awareness, Information Exchange and Operational Control Platform"", in short an ""operational control platform"" (OCP). The design of the OCP raises challenges that are relevant not only for European CSDP missions but also for crisis management operations in general, namely questions of situational awareness, interoperability, security and local versus remote operational control. The Civilex project has provided an overview of the actual state of operational control in CSDP missions, investigated current challenges, collected requirements for an OCP and, ultimately, proposed design options for a future platform with the goal to improve situational awareness, information exchange and operational control for CSDP missions. This paper presents the outcomes of the Civilex project.