Institute for Security Science & Technology

Omar Matar, CEO Quaisr, Vice Dean of Engineering and Professor of Multiphase Fluid Dynamics at Imperial College London.

Digital twins have been around for some time (in fact, the term ‘Digital Twin’ was coined in 2003 by Michael Grieves of Florida Institute of Technology) and are used in a variety of sectors, from manufacturing to energy to consumer goods. One way to define a digital twin, inspired by Arup, is a combination of computational models and a real-world system capable of monitoring, controlling, and optimising its functionality, of developing capacities for autonomy, and of learning from and reasoning about its environment through data and feedback, both simulated and real.

The ongoing trend towards digitalisation of just about every sector is driving massive acceleration in digital-twin adoption as new data streams become available to organisations. The digital-twin market is reportedly experiencing 100% growth year-on-year with some projecting that it will reach $48 billion in 2026, from just $3 billion in 2020.

Despite this growth, the full potential of digital twins has yet to be realised. With colleagues from Imperial College London and the Alan Turing Institute, I co-founded Quaisr to bring digital twins into the machine-learning age, allowing enhanced capabilities with applications spanning environmental monitoring to improving infrastructure resilience.

But what exactly are digital twins? You can think of a digital twin as a digital replica of a physical asset. An asset is instrumented with a variety of sensors which collect and feed information back to the individual or system controlling the asset, who can then action interventions based on this information.

In the most basic sense, digital twins work to integrate various sources of digital information about the asset and its environment to allow more efficient and predicative modifications and iterations on the physical world.

If you think about the baseline of how this happens, the data-integration and iteration journey revolve around the operator. For example, as shown graphically in the ‘Baseline’ image below, R&D teams that run experiments, simulations or other innovation projects feed data to a human operator, who then runs small-scale tests followed by production or pilot-scale testing. At each of these two stages (bench, production/pilot), there is manual feedback of asset data back to the operator to allow for iterative improvements.

 

Using existing technology, we can go one step beyond this as shown in the ‘Iteration’ image. Here, the operator stays in the loop but with a semi-automated feedback process. For example, you might have experiments automatically feeding data into a digital recommendation engine at one end, and the production scale tests doing the same at the other end, but with an operator in between deciding on whether or not to act on the intelligence provided.

But now imagine a situation where you have an operator interacting and collaborating with a smart machine, as shown in the ‘Vision’ image. This is what we are really driving towards with our approach to digital twins.

Here you have information from experiments, simulations and algorithms driving the recommendation engine, together with the information coming back from the production testing. Between these two sources of information in the loop you have a robotic operator or smart machine actioning the suggestions, collaborating closely with the human operator. This opens up many new opportunities in not just optimising physical assets but also understanding how they might behave in a given situation. If basic IoT streams allow you to understand the health of the asset, the ‘what now’, and the addition of machine learning unlocks future projections through ‘what next’ questions, Quaisr digital twins enable the ‘what if?’ type question. For example, you might want to know how your asset will behave if it is pushed outside of its comfort zone into a completely new operating space: to understand if it will be safe, secure and resilient.

The types of challenge that our digital twin components can address are broad; from helping to solve challenges such as environmental contamination detection, to production-line decision automation, to optimisation of offshore wind farm locations. We have projects completed, in progress or starting soon with major companies at the operational level.

Quaisr provides modular components for building digital twins, backed by a managed service. We help customers to create their own digital twins using in-house domain knowledge, reducing the problems of adapting and commissioning generic commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) alternatives. Quaisr components empower citizen developers to build production tooling using internal company data streams and existing cloud-provider resources.

Our approach accelerates the journey to digitalisation by providing insight for design and prototyping, by bridging the gap between data and actionable intelligence to empower decision making.   Our approach also unlocks collaboration via a cross-team digitalisation standard. Importantly we prioritise interoperability with existing technologies in a company’s ecosystem, allowing the integration of often siloed legacy data with newer data streams and machine learning.

Digital twinning is a developing field, and so whilst there are several existing companies with capabilities in one or more of the underlying aspects such as data streaming or simulation, Quaisr is unique in taking a digital-twin-first approach, combining all of the elements to make the infrastructure for creating digital-twins.

With the rapid speed at which global digitalisation is taking place, and with the rapid improvements and deployment of machine learning and simulation, the next phase of bringing these factors together to realise increased capabilities and efficiencies will depend on digital twins. Quaisr is at the forefront of this revolution.

For more information on how we work with companies, please get in touch at omar@quaisr.io.

Read Quaisr: Digital twins for the machine-learning age in full

Adrian Holt is Head of Defence at Capita Consulting and a mentor to a range of start-ups. He is a retired Royal Air Force Officer having served for more than 24 years.

Capita is a consulting, digital services and software business, delivering innovative solutions and simplifying the connections between businesses and customers, governments and citizens. The company is one of our industry partners in the ISST Innovation Ecosystem.

 

The role of industry in the broad security and defence innovation ecosystem is a subject close to my heart. Throughout my career I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to defence procurement, and I know that we can, and we must, do better.

The fact that over the past 10-15 years, something like a 25-year technology advantage in some areas had been squandered, suggests that the ugly has sometimes outweighed the good. I’m hoping that by encouraging this discussion as a community, we can identify the problems and find solutions.

So, what is the ‘bad’ or ‘ugly’, and what is the ‘ecosystem’?

I define the ecosystem as the sum of efforts of government, industry and start-ups contributing to defence and security, with academia playing an essential role feeding directly in to all three of these.

During my career in the RAF I was in the position of using, supporting or buying platforms, and as Stephen Covey said, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are”. So what does bad look like from my perspective? There are three points which I think were far from ideal:

1. Highly complex and detailed project and capability plans which quickly become unmanageable.

Plans are of course essential, but in my career I have seen many become too complex, unmanageable, and unrealistic. This causes those in charge of delivering the plans to spend all of their time planning and not enough in delivering, so milestones inevitably get missed. I personally spent 18 months of a tour managing a plan that I knew was never going to get executed simply as it was too complicated and continually slipped because everyone was moving around trying to manage the plan rather than execute.

When the overly complex plans fail, we then end up in a situation where everyone is trying to hold everyone else accountable, whether that’s industry holding government to account or vice versa. It gets incredibly difficult adversarial and expensive to change anything, and we end up stuck with capability plans which are so long and enduring that the solutions are obsolete before even being delivered.

2. Competition rules and commercial processes which allow the big players to catch-up at the expense of first mover innovators.

The glacial pace of procurement in defence means that a start-up that has an innovation on the shelf can be overtaken by industry primes in the time it takes to complete the commercial cycle. The primes can use the time to create an offer from scratch. Then their size, structure and experience allows them to navigate the bureaucracy and finance systems of the customer more efficiently, whereas start-ups often just don’t have the capacity for this.

3. Barriers to design thinking.

Whilst this is not as obvious as the first two problems, this one I think is very important. Sometimes, industry tries to keep itself in between the start-up solution provider and the government client, probably to keep an eye on potential profit opportunities or increases in scope. I have personally seen this leave one start-up badly damaged when they were unable to fix delivery client problems due to them being contractually bound to only conduct work dictated by the prime.  This reduced quality, increased cost reduced trust and irrevocably tarnished the start-up’s reputation.

A more beneficial relationship would be for the start-up and the end user to be working closely together at the front line, where the problem exists. It would be a much healthier relationship and would have benefited all parties in the long term.

Erosion of trust

Where these problems occur, they seem to arise from an erosion of trust which then necessitates bureaucratic and adversarial conditions in the complex and expensive procurement process. This isn’t the optimum situation for any party, but I’d argue that the start-ups and the people on the front line pay the largest price.

So what can we do about this?

I have seen some great examples of how we can overcome these challenges from my experience working with the jHub which I helped establish in late 2017.

The jHUb was the initiative of General Sir Christopher Deverell, created to help the then Joint Forces Command become more ambidextrous, that is able to explore new opportunities whilst simultaneously benefiting from the investments it had already made.

It was a radical departure from what I’d seen in a nearly quarter of a century through my career.  A key objective of this was to become a better partner for start-ups. The idea was to help them understand how to work with government, to help government understand them and to help both parties over some of the hurdles.

jHUbs value proposition is to connect world-class technology and talent to users in the defence sector. They do this by funding and accelerating pilots, with successful ideas getting access to an innovation committee who can make strategic investment decisions. It reduces a lot of the burden from early-stage innovators.

But beyond this we tried to build a system to actively encourage early-stage businesses to work with Defence, by showing that we’d not only reduced the burden, but that we also understood the problems they’d face.

We didn’t get everything right but we did make a difference. Through a network of partners we managed to deliver 18 projects in our first 18 months, which was unheard of in traditional defence timelines.

New challenges and solutions

That being said, I still lost a number of deals with promising start-ups because they simply weren’t able to engage with government traditional procurement processes which are paperwork heavy, long and drawn out. New challenges emerged like how to help them over regulatory hurdles such as explosives handling, helping them through security clearance and getting them access to X listed facilities. Business support was also important; many start-ups don’t have the business experience to get themselves into shape to do business with entities of the scale and complexity of government.

So how do we fix the remainder? I personally think industry is front and centre in this.

First, we need to help start-ups navigate the Valley of Death by providing services that they find genuinely useful, such as business support, or resources to help them scale for when they do land a contract with government. We can provide them facilities or spaces in the right places, such as access to X-listed facilities if needed. We can help them in getting security clearance so that they can expand the types of contracts they can accept. We can provide them with connections to help them make more compelling offers on tenders.

We’re all in this together

Most importantly, we need to see that our fortunes are inextricably linked and recognise this in the agreements we make.  We need to move towards mutually beneficial contracts between government, big business and start-ups and aim for win-win outcomes. It is no good if one party signs a contract which is financially beneficial for them in the short term at everyone else’s cost. It simply adds to the erosion of trust.

We also need to take more risk against the contracts we sign and be more agile in their delivery. We need to avoid adversarial adherence to unrealistic schedules.

We can consider leaving holes in our contracts so that either SMEs or Forces personnel can move into those spaces and they’re not so reliant on Primes. And if necessary, we should sometimes look to take the hit on margins to enable a deal to get done.

My hypothesis is that if we do all these things then we will gain mutual and collective benefit through the return business we get, and from the trust we’ve developed with the government and with start-ups.

Finally, we need to aim for genuine collaboration. I can’t think of a better example of that than the ISST Innovation Ecosystem. In a fast-moving world, it will be exceedingly rare to find the answer inside the room, and so new spaces and forums are needed. Even when we own the technology our clients need, we might be better off partnering with others to deliver it in the most beneficial way. And it’s through organisations like the ISST that we can enable this to happen.

Read The role of industry in security and defence innovation in full

The Institute for Security Science and Technology recently ran an online briefing event with Imperial SpaceLab and ISPL around space safety and security.

The discussion highlighted the complexity of issues around space commercialisation and governance, and touched on international relations, politics and science.

We posed a few questions to three members of the expert panel to share their thoughts on some of the main discussion threads which came up.

The panel included Dr Jonathan Eastwood (Imperial College London), Nick Howes (BMT) and Rich Laing (Nato Communications and Information Agency).

 

Dr Jonathan Eastwood, Senior Lecturer and Director of Imperial SpaceLab

“The area of space safety and security cuts across an enormous variety of sectors and interests. There is a real need for everyone to work together, and to bring different entities and institutions to the table so that the best solutions can be found.”

 

How important do you see national risk registers in driving policy around space safety and security?

The National Risk Register plays a really important role in crystallising understanding of different potential threats, and providing a central statement of the need to address them. In the case of space weather for example, its introduction into the Register was of key importance because it galvanised a number of separate communities to come together to address the problem. As a result, the UK is arguably world-leading in a number of areas relating to space weather preparedness, and is much more joined up (particularly between academia, industry and government) than it otherwise would have been.

What do you think the key developing issues policy makers should have in their minds regarding space safety and security, for informing their jobs?

On one level, I think it’s very important that policy in this area is evidence-based, and also scientifically based: operations in space are subject to the laws of physics! This means a good understanding of the physical environment, its properties, and then how human and robotic activities are affected are all crucial. At a second level, from my own research area it’s important to recognise that space isn’t ‘empty’, and that there are all sorts of effects – space weather – that can affect our modern technological society both in space and on the ground.

What do you see as the role of academia in helping to develop the UK’s space safety and security capabilities?

The area of space safety and security cuts across an enormous variety of sectors and interests. There is a real need for everyone to work together, and to bring different entities and institutions to the table so that the best solutions can be found. I hope that the academic sector can facilitate this, particularly in providing objective, evidence-based input to the formulation of space policy and law. Academia also has a key role to play in helping policy makers, who may not have a technical background, to understand these issues.

 

Nick Howes, Lead R&D Space Systems, BMT

“The threat to our defence and critical national and international infrastructure from a Kessler scale event, cannot be overstated.”

 

Are we doomed to repeat the same dynamics in international governance of space as we have with land and s

The key issue is that the mega constellations appear to be launching with almost impunity. Licences from the FCC being almost granted like water. The threat to our defence and critical national and international infrastructure from a Kessler scale event, cannot be overstated. Therefore, it appears we are, and the United Nations really need to step in, before it is too late.

How do mega-constellations impact planetary defence surveys and other issues of global collaboration?

Wide field telescope surveys from the like of LSST and the large binocular survey rely on their ability using automated data reduction pipelines to observe and track comets and asteroids for both science, and as potential threats. Putting upwards of 50,000 satellites in the way, even at magnitude 8 (these scopes can hit magnitude 24 easily), will make that job more difficult. The impact on radio astronomy will be nothing short of catastrophic

Are there any specific issues of space related safety and security regarding Brexit?

The major issue with Brexit is the isolation of the UK, and the brain drain in academia and science we are already seeing.

What do you see as the role of academia and industry in helping to develop the UK’s space safety/security capabilities?

Academia and industry need to ensure that the future for scientific exploration is there. Teams like the SSLC have been attempting to assist and inform government with respect to the regulations. We can only hope they listen

 

Richard Laing, Senior Scientist, Nato Communications and Information Agency

“Current structures for governance are predominantly based upon Westphalian concepts of state, and would need to adapt to embrace multinationals and commercial entities [in space].”

 

Are we doomed to repeat the same dynamics in international governance of space as we have with land and sea?

The potential of space means that nations, multinationals and the commercial sector have a keen interest in operating within the global commons of space.  As these interested parties have self-interests that are inevitably going to conflict, the need for accepted norms of behaviour is key, and establishing a form of governance will have to be closely associated.  Agreeing the behaviours for a “responsible actor” in space, will also inevitably need some form of mechanism for cautioning and “punishing” those who break those behaviours.

Current structures for governance are predominantly based upon Westphalian concepts of state, and would need to adapt to embrace multinationals and commercial entities.  Without an effective method for establishing norms of behaviour and governing activity, the first mover advantage will lie with those prepared to take the highest risk (physical, political, or reputational) at the expense of other actors.

What do you think the key developing issues policy makers should have in their minds regarding space safety and  security, for informing their jobs?

An effective understanding of threat needs to embrace threats from all angles; natural, nefarious and accidental. To achieve this understanding of the environment, the need to share data and work in collaboration with other actors is key, linking to the previous point on the need for a structure to establish behaviours and offer a communication forum.

The potential for accidental or irresponsible actions to be misconstrued as nefarious could lead to strategic repercussions; safety and security in space is based on an understanding of the operational environment, and the motivations of other space actors.  Grey Zone activity, that level of conflict that exists between war and peace and has become increasingly predominant, will inevitably reach into space; understanding where and when this may happen is vital for attributing blame for safety/security events.

Read Expert panel shines light on key space safety and security issues in full

Earlier this year we welcomed BMT as the latest industry partner in the ISST Innovation Ecosystem.

BMT is an international design, engineering, technology and risk management consultancy . With a broad and deep range of expertise, BMT operates across multiple markets including Shipping, Defence, Security, Environment and Infrastructure.

Max Swinscow-Hall recently caught up with Alan Hodgson – Security, Policing and Justice Lead at BMT – to learn more about what they offer and how they are planning to get involved with the ecosystem.

 

What is BMT’s mission and how do you achieve this?

Our mission is to provide clarity from complexity; working with our customers to turn their complex projects into clear thinking and groundbreaking solutions.

We achieve this by providing independent technical expertise and consultancy. We offer Defence and Security Acquisition and Customer Friend support, Maritime Design and Consultancy, Asset Monitoring and Sustainment, Environmental and Climate Solutions to our global customer base.

Our specific areas of expertise within Security and Technology include:

• Agile Software Design and Delivery
• Advanced Data Analytics and Insight
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• Cyber Security Services
• Digital and Business Transformation
• Change Management
• Strategic Delivery Partnerships

 

Who does BMT typically work with and how can academia engage with BMT

BMT works with a range of defence customers — such as the UK Ministry of Defence, Dstl, Defence Digital, the Front Line Commands and industry suppliers  — and security customers including the Metropolitan Police Service, Counter Terrorism Policing HQ, National Crime Agency, Home Office (including the Accelerated Capability Environment) and the Ministry of Justice.

BMT has a strong and diverse academic engagement portfolio across the UK. We do not limit ourselves to a small number of institutions but instead strive to create networks across academia linking together the best individuals and centres of excellence. This is one of the reasons we were so keen to join the Imperial Institute for Security Science and Technology; their expertise in both defence and security is something that sets them apart.

We have found recently that our defence and security customers increasingly value the academic viewpoint and perspective when completing exploratory or innovative projects. We are always keen to work with academia both on structured course-based research programmes and through collaborative project work.

 

What projects have you been involved with recently?

We’re proud to have provided the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) with essential management consultancy services since 2016; we’ve become the Met’s trusted advisor for their transformation portfolio, a £1bn capital investment that delivers £450m-£650m in operational savings each year to ensure that the Met continues to be the world’s leading police force and that London is the safest global city.

An important example of these efforts is “One Met Model 2020” – a major initiative to equip officers with the skills, tools and approach to police London effectively in the digital age. It’s a substantial, long-term change designed to introduce more efficient ways of working to deliver a better service to the public. However, the Met faced a challenge in that they lacked sufficiently qualified and experienced managers to run the necessary programmes and projects.

In order to help them meet that challenge, we provided Programme Managers, Project Managers and Senior Project Managers operating at senior levels of the organisation to deliver projects. Our consultants also worked closely with existing MPS programme managers to coach and train them, improving their capabilities and ensuring consistent standards across the service.

By developing and delivering business cases, introducing project artefacts to improve management, leading the delivery of effective dependency management and providing much-needed leadership to complex projects and programmes, our work has been instrumental in helping the MPS to successfully deliver this major transformation.

We have successfully worked on other novel and complex change programmes across multiple domains. As a business we have benefitted hugely from experience delivering large scale, complex security programmes and we have supported a range of Security, Intelligence and Law Enforcement Agencies.

 

How have you seen COVID-19 impacting the security and defence?

Even before COVID-19, the defence, security and policing landscape was complex but also constantly changing with budgets being stretched. All services are having to become more resilient, responsive and agile. An increasing dependency on data and digital technologies is at the heart of ongoing reform and modernisation. COVID has helped to accelerate this change but also poses a range of future budgetary risks and uncertainties.

Like many other government departments, the defence and security sector is becoming  more effective and more efficient by transforming support services, reducing estate costs, reducing management overheads, increasing frontline productivity, replacing core systems, removing unnecessary bureaucracy and developing new capabilities to meet emerging demands.

Our recent Focus magazine on the topic of Digital Transformation goes into more detail about these changes and what organisations can do, in practice, to respond to this – turning the buzz word of “Digital Transformation” into actionable steps as part of a 10 step process.

 

As we move towards an increased reliance on digital platforms, a range of broader cyber security risks are also raised. How is BMT working to reduce this cyber security threat?

We recognise the vital importance of cyber security, especially in the current COVID-19 world where we have seen a rise the number and frequency of attacks. To help our customers counter this threat and mitigate their risks, we have a dedicated cyber security consulting team here at BMT.

Our blended team of cyber security experts, data scientists and software developers help organisations reduce risks and improve resilience by developing their capacity to identify threats, protect assets and detect cyber events.

1. Identify – We work with our customers to help them identify security and information risks. We offer business–driven advice on how they can best manage and mitigate these risks throughout the project life cycle.
2. Protect – We help our customers protect their critical assets by transforming their cyber security. Our consulting services and cyber solutions reduce the impact of possible cyber security threats by using best practices for data protection and security.
3. Detect – Our cyber security consultants apply their expertise in machine learning, data science, data modelling and analytics to help our clients detect known and unknown cyber events.

The cyber threat is constantly evolving and maturing and therefore so must the security solutions. We are always looking for new ways to tackle current and future cyber threats and so are keen to work with academia to explore potential solutions.

 

What attracted you to joining the Ecosystem and how do you see BMT playing a part?

The ecosystem has already got a brilliant reputation for bringing together the golden triangle of industry, academia and government in one forum to talk about disruptive technologies and turn ideas for change into reality.

We are very keen to play an active role in the ecosystem and hope that we will have a chance to contribute thought leadership and work together in a range of joint research projects. We are especially excited to hear about the ISST-organised conferences and hope to use this as a chance to talk about our internal research programmes. We are also hopeful that through membership of the ecosystem it will bring us closer to the students at Imperial College London, using this engagement as part of our continuous search for new talent.

Read Introducing BMT – the latest partner to join the ISST Innovation Ecosystem in full

 

The UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) opened a hub in the I-HUB building on Imperial’s White City campus back in July of 2018.  Since then, the presence of security and defence organisations at the I-HUB has continued to grow with the expanding ISST Innovation Ecosystem.

ISST Special Projects Manager, Zarine Khurshid, caught up with Jo Symons who joined DASA early 2020, to give Jo the opportunity to introduce herself and talk more about innovation in security and defence, and DASA’s successes to date.

 

What led you to join DASA?

I joined DASA at the end of February but it feels as if my career to date has been leading to this role.

I joined the civil service straight after completing my degree in Manufacturing Engineering at Birmingham University and one of my first roles was as a technical assessor for a Government scheme which gave small companies grants for research and technology projects.

That whetted my appetite for supporting innovators, which has continued throughout my career. My fascination for how innovators and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) grow continued, and I was very lucky to be able to undertake an Executive MBA at Imperial College London.

My MBA project investigated the differences between angel finance in Cambridge and Silicon Valley just before the dot.com bubble burst. I went on to lead a review which resulted in the creation of what is now Innovate UK. Working with the Business Department’s Chief Entrepreneurial Adviser we undertook a review of entrepreneurship in the UK and alongside this I researched the rapidly developing accelerator and incubator market in this country.

I am so pleased to be working at DASA – an exciting, young organisation that is trying to do things differently in very challenging and important sectors.  As a former student I’m delighted I’ll be able to support Imperial College London’s work to develop the Defence and Security Cluster at the White City campus.

 

What is your role at DASA?

My role is Head of the Partnerships and Impact Team; the aim is to increase the number of innovations funded through DASA that progress through the development journey and turn them into capability that is in the hands of the Armed Forces and security services. We recognise that developing the technology is only one part of progressing ideas through to delivery and that an SME needs a range of support to enable it to grow and secure customers. We do this by:

• working in partnership with the Armed Forces and other Government agencies to understand their problems so we can tailor our competitions to solve them and encourage the customer to pull through the ideas
• acting as a smart broker to provide access to mentoring and finance support for SMEs
• working in partnership with Imperial College to support the development of the Defence and Security Cluster
• facilitating interaction between SMEs and large industry to encourage collaboration.

 

What is DASA’s role?

DASA’s role is to find and fund exploitable innovation to support UK defence and security quickly and effectively, and support UK prosperity. We have a team of Innovation partners located geographically who find innovators, entrepreneurs and people with ideas. We are interested in any science, technology or service at any stage, from anywhere and anyone. Our competitive process brings experts together to rigorously assess these ideas so we fund only the best and help these ideas accelerate their development. Once funded my team helps the idea progress further towards adoption and integration.

 

Why is innovation so important in security and defence?

It is not just important for defence and security to innovate, it’s absolutely crucial for our national security. The threats the UK faces at home and abroad from our adversaries have intensified in scale, diversity and complexity.

We’re witnessing the resurgence of state-based threats and increasing competition, the undermining and destabilising of the international rules based order, the rise in cyber-attacks, and the wider impact of technological developments which are enabling non-state actors such as terrorist and organised crime groups to have capabilities that previously only states had.

To counter these, we have to retain our strategic and technological advantage. The only way we can achieve that is to be innovative.

What role should government have in the security/defence innovation pathway?

The challenge is to stay ahead of our adversaries and increase our agility to adapt and evolve in the face of evolving threats at unprecedented speed. The Government has a fundamental role in using every lever we have as a nation to achieve this – bringing to bear the widest possible range of capabilities, including defence, diplomatic, economic and so on.

DASA is playing a pivotal role in fast-tracking great ideas and innovative solutions from the private and public sector to some of our most pressing defence and national security challenges.

 

What are the standout successes from DASA to date?

A great example of how DASA is delivering innovation quickly is the crowd safety app, The Krowd. After the Manchester Arena and London Bridge terror attacks in 2017, DASA launched a competition funded by the Home Office to fund crowd safety technology.

The Krowd was one of the projects that received funding and it allows the public to speak directly with security teams at venues, stadiums, transport hubs and shopping centres if they spot suspicious activity.

The app is already in use at the Broadgate Quarter in London and the Exeter Guildhall Shopping Centre.

Other standout successes include our work with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) to accelerate the development of autonomous ground resupply vehicles for the Armed Forces. Our early work has led to two contracts worth around £5m for the companies we worked with to trial their innovations with the British Army – due to start this year.

And our Access to Mentoring and Finance service has really taken off in the past year, hosting an Investment Showcase and attracting a wide range of investors which in turn has sparked relationships between the investor community and some of our most promising SMEs. Off the back of some of the training provided by DASA, Kinsetsu, a Northern Ireland-based SME, has grown its turnover to an impressive £1.25m and are now much better prepared to start their journey to investment in 2021.  The company specialise in innovative tracking software that can account for and track personnel or assets – giving a real-time view of missing people or items.

After DASA funding of £125,000 it has been trialled with Royal Navy on HMS Bristol. This work has led to a commercialisation opportunity with the Royal Navy contracting the company to conduct further trials on HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier to start this year. The devices have multiple security uses such as energy and nuclear sites, prisons, hospitals and blue light services, potentially saving thousands of human hours on paper-based manual checks with improved accuracy. The company have successfully commercialised the innovation with the NHS, and gone onto successfully win new Government funding.

The firm’s managing director Jackie Crooks says: “DASA has been invaluable in raising our profile and enabling access to the defence and security sector which we could never have achieved on our own. Mentoring underlined the importance of continuing to innovate, even in an economic downturn, and in May 2020 we were delighted to receive £50,000 from the UK Government’s Fast Start Competition to deliver contact tracing to protect community care teams supporting the elderly and vulnerable against Covid-19.”

 

How does White City fit into DASA’s objectives?

Innovation flourishes through collaboration and a wide range of voices and perspectives. The Defence and Security Cluster at White City creates the conditions for successful collaboration because it brings together industry, SMEs, academia and Government and enables opportunities to be accelerated through partnership working. It will foster a culture of innovation delivery at pace across defence and national security.

Having a physical presence at White City enables DASA to be accessible and part of the developing innovation ecosystem there.

 

What do you hope to build with the White City ecosystem?

A thriving environment that creates the conditions for collaboration between SMES, large industry, government and academia. Personally, I would like to see some of the SMEs that DASA has funded grow and secure customers and partners for their onward journey. Ultimately, we would like to see new innovations become adopted and integrated into use with our Armed Forces and security services and agencies.

 

Read Jo Symons from DASA talks about innovation and DASA’s successes in full

This article was originally published online by the U.S. Naval Institute, and featured in the March 2020 issue of their journal Proceedings.

Captain Brasseur has over 20 years leadership experience in the U.S. Navy, including command of the USS Whirlwind (PC-11) at the age of 30 in the Arabian Gulf in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is currently serving in the Armament Cooperation Directorate at the U.S. Mission to NATO. The views presented here are his own, and not that of the U.S. Navy or U.S. Mission to NATO.

The ISST is collaborating with NATO and the NATO MUSIC^2 programme via the White City Ecosystem.

By Captain Michael D. Brasseur, U.S. Navy

Read Sailing into the Coronavirus Storm Together. A captain’s advice for the rough seas ahead. in full