[Blog by the LasciateCIEntrare campaign] 5 November 2021 – In July 2021, Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard agency, and the Italian consortium composed by Associazione Ithaca, DIST (Dipartimento Interateneo di Scienze, Progetto e Politiche del Territorio) of Turin Polytechnic and Ithaca Srl (a company controlled by the homonymous association) signed “an important cartographic production contract” to support European border surveillance activities. The contract lasts for 24 months, with a total budget of four million euros, and may be renewed for a maximum of a further 24 months.
The non-profit ITHACA association based in Turin is part of the consortium. It was born as an applied research centre with the goal of cooperating with the World Food Programme (WFP) – the UN’s branch to provide food assistance – to distribute products and services linked to IT, “to improve the capacity of the international humanitarian community regarding early warning, swift impact assessment and other areas connected to risk management”.