Competition summary: improving crowd resilience
Updated 28 July 2017
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This Defence and Security Accelerator competition seeks innovative or novel ideas to reduce the threat from the terrorist or malicious use of explosives and weapons in public spaces by using the crowd as a sensor. These capabilities and systems are to be used in crowded spaces, such as shopping centres, sports stadia and entertainment venues.
This competition seeks proposals for technologies, systems and behavioral sciences, as part of a whole systems approach to improve the detection of explosives and weapons within crowded spaces.
1. Background
Recent events in London and Manchester have demonstrated the impact that people armed with explosives and weapons can have on crowds. The UK Government is looking at how science and technology could help deter and defeat such attacks now, and in the future.
This competition forms part of the Home Office’s CONTEST Science and Technology programme which aims to build on and complement cross-departmental efforts, such as: the Innovation Research Call (IRC) on explosives and weapons; the Joint Security and Resilience Centre (JSaRC) high foot-fall screening demonstrators; and, the Open Call for Innovation and Future Aviation Security Solutions competitions calls through the Defence and Security Accelerator.
The challenges of this competition are to develop and demonstrate how we use the crowd to identify a threat by :
- detecting the crowd’s conscious and sub-conscious reaction to threats
- training the public to spot threats
- enabling the crowd to report threats
2. Funding
Up to £1 million is available for phase 1 of this competition and up to £1 million will be made available for phase 2 of the competition.
3. Competition close
This competition closed on 20 September 2017.
4. Other opportunities
This competition is just one part of the Home Office Security-related Science & Technology programme. There will be other funding opportunities spanning all technology readiness levels (TRLs) that will be open to UK-based and international bidders.