Emerging technology trends can seem both elusive and ephemeral but some become integral to business and IT strategies and form the backbone of tomorrow’s business model and technology innovation. Companies (and Administrations) must examine the business impact of these trends and adjust business models and operations appropriately or risk losing competitive advantage to those who do. Rather the technology being difficult it is the implementation of it that could be a challenge. We’re working in an environment where volumes and complexity are increasing, but budgets are decreasing. How to sense and act upon a future that remains unclear? It is required to think very differently about the way to conceive and deliver technology services. The technology is the last step of the foresight process. The author aims to provide an answer to the above enquire starting from the identification of technologies and future technological concepts having potentially a significant impact on maritime traffic management and border control systems and the community in the medium to long term, i.e. 5 to 20 years. It is aimed at the idea of capacity building, not simply forecasting. A brief history of Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) followed by some systems engineering considerations are presented in paragraph 1 with connections to technology trends such as intelligent, digital and mesh in the next paragraph. On maritime domain these means, for instance, moving from traditional VTS to Maritime Service Portfolios (MSP) for e-Navigation. Bioinspired technologies forecasts are presented in paragraph 3 with examples of concrete practical use and possible further applications: drones, camera tracking and classification systems and passive as well as cognitive radars. Conclusions and a brief outlook will close the text.