SRI to open EU-funded intelligence research unit at Otopeni Academy

The Mihai Viteazu National Intelligence Academy, part of Romania’s Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), plans to open a research unit at its location in Otopeni, Profit.ro writes.

The new building, occupying 1,505 square meters, has two floors and will be built using EU funds, via the Competitiveness Operational Programme. The contract for projecting was awarded to Nox International SRL, the Romanian subsidiary of French construction and engineering group Nox SA. This is not the first collaboration between SRI and the company, and it follows two contracts concluded in 2016, with a value of RON 650,000.

The research complex, which will be named INTELIGENT, will feature 7 labs, namely a strategic crisis communication lab (with 300 seats), fundamental research in intelligence lab (85 seats), security policies (100 seats), local, regional and global security lab (40 seats), competitive intelligence lab (100 seats) and experimental psychology lab (70 seats).

“The market of competitive intelligence has seen an unprecedented growth, the sector becoming a priority. This is reflected both in the academic environment, by increasing the research activities on the security and intelligence, as well as a technology level, by diversifying hardware and software products to collect and analyse information,” Profit.ro quoted the documents accompanying the project.