The false-alarm rates depend on the areas being searched, and can reach levels of 1000 to 1. Every time an alarm is raised, a safe clearance operation must be started, and this time is wasted if the object that triggered the alarm was innocuous. A high false-alarm rate hence multiplies the demining time by a large factor. All projects in this area are organised in close co-operation between developers of advanced equipment and their users, namely organisations with substantial experience of humanitarian demining operations in the field. The users are involved in every step of the work, from requirements to test and validation.
All projects aim at concrete results to be demonstrated in the field.
A first avenue of work is to improve existing sensor systems, for example through the use of advanced signal processing methods, software and hardware. Results of the work in this direction are expected within a relatively short time, and could be later integrated in multi-sensor systems. Validation is planned through tests at the JRC in Ispra and in the field by mid-2000. It is then less likely that an object other than a mine will raise an alarm simultaneously with all sensors. The set of projects below aim at integrating portable multi-sensor systems.