Notice

Competition document: what's inside that building?

Updated 10 September 2015

1. What’s inside that building?

This Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) themed competition seeks novel techniques to remotely provide information about the layout and situation inside a building or underground facility from a range of at least 100 metres.

This competition was briefed at the CDE Innovation Network event on 9 July 2015 in London and at a webinar on 16 July 2015.

Proposals must be received by 5pm on Thursday 10 September 2015. Submit your proposal using the CDE online portal.

2. Background

Knowing what’s going on inside a building of interest is important for defence and security. For example, in the past, terrorist training camps would be out in the open, but then came Google Earth. Suddenly the activities were visible to everyone, so terrorists now hide their activities within buildings.

The ability to remotely gather information about the inside of buildings is critical to defeat increasingly sophisticated adversaries. This could include (but isn’t limited to):

• detecting concealed manufacturing activity
• finding out about the internal structure of a building in preparation for entry (including walls, furniture and electrical equipment)
• identifying illegal storage activities
• working out the number of people in a building and what they are doing
• detecting people who are hiding or being held against their will
• supporting disaster relief, ie seeing under collapsed buildings

Through this CDE themed competition, we seek novel techniques to remotely provide information about the layout and situation inside a building or underground facility. We welcome proposals that will develop and mature concepts based on both direct sensing and inference from indirect measurements. This CDE themed competition seeks low (2 to 3) technology readiness level (TRL) concepts. For a description of TRLs access MOD’s Acquisition System Guidance.

We expect to fund a number of feasibility demonstrations, and intend to take forward a smaller number of those projects in the longer term at phase 2.

3. Technology challenges

We’re interested in technologies and methods to gather any information that contributes to our overall awareness of a building interior.

Determining the internal structure of a building, the number and movements of people within a building, or the equipment inside a building are all examples of useful information. We don’t expect any one approach to address all these.

Traditional sensing methods may have a role to play but ideas shouldn’t be constrained to these technologies.

3.1 Challenge 1: novel applications of traditional sensing methods

For this competition the term ‘traditional sensing methods’ refers to all sensing methods that try to directly measure properties of interest by exploiting effects at a distance, including but not limited to:

• electromagnetic signals ranging from radio waves to gamma rays
• acoustic or seismic signals (waves in the air or through the earth) either caused deliberately or using convenient sources of sound or vibration
• magnetic or gravitational field changes caused by, for example, electrical equipment in a building or large underground cavities

3.2 Challenge 2: new technologies and approaches

For this competition ‘new’ refers to non-standard technologies and approaches that allow information of interest to be inferred through indirect measurements.

An example would be inferring the number of people inside a building by observing the number of cars in the car park. This is a particularly simple example intended to illustrate the concept and shouldn’t constrain the novel ideas we seek. Also, we expect that proposed approaches will provide a significantly greater level of information than this example.

4. What we want

We’re looking for technologies and methods that are covert and work remotely. We want proposals that can prove claims of robust performance at ranges of over 100 metres.

We’re interested in non-standard technologies and approaches that contribute substantially to building up an understanding of what’s inside a building, perhaps by combining a number of elements.

We’ll favour projects that produce a technology demonstration over projects that only produce a written report.

We want innovative proposals, but you should state clearly the technology developments needed to realise the innovation and the expected timescale for technology maturation.

5. What we don’t want

We’re not interested in established techniques for sensing through walls when next to the building, for example hand-held radar sensors.

We don’t want proposals for trivial examples of non-standard technologies and approaches that provide only a very limited amount of information about the interior of a building.

We won’t fund projects that have little innovation, but we’ll consider proposals for research into a novel approach to exploiting existing technology.

Projects without a clear defence application or where the main output is a literature review are unlikely to be successful.

We don’t want proposals for PhD projects as the timescale for delivery is too constrained, but we’ll consider small feasibility studies that might lead to a PhD project.

6. Exploitation

At the end of phase 1, successfully funded projects will be asked to demonstrate their technology at a stakeholder event in September 2016 at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) Porton Down to support wider exploitation through Dstl and the wider Ministry of Defence (MOD). Bidders should cost this into their proposals.

We aim to take forward a number of the most successful outputs from phase-1 projects for phase-2 funding. Only bidders funded at phase 1 qualify for entry into phase 2 of this competition where up to an additional £500,000 of funding will be made available. Phase-2 funding will be awarded on a per-project basis.

As a deliverable of the phase-1 project, successful bidders will also be expected to produce a costed plan of recommended future work to be carried out.

7. Important information

This competition will be supported by presentations given at the Innovation Network event on Thursday 9 July 2015.

Proposals for funding must be submitted by 5pm on Thursday 10 September 2015 using the CDE online portal.

You must mark all proposals for this themed competition with ‘what’s inside that building’ + challenge 1 or 2 as appropriate as a prefix in your title.

There is no cap on the value of proposals but it is more likely that at phase 1 a larger number of lower-value proposals (eg £50,000 to £100,000) will be funded than a small number of higher-value proposals. The total funding available for phase 1 of this competition is £650,000.

Proposals should focus on a short, sharp, proof-of-concept phase, typically, but not exclusively, 3 to 8 months in duration with deliverables completed by 28 August 2016. Your proposal must also include a clear milestone payment schedule.

Proposals can include a descriptive scoping for a longer programme of any duration but the proposal should be clearly partitioned with a costed proof-of-concept stage, which is the focus of phase 1 of this CDE themed competition. Proposals for further work beyond the proof-of-concept stage will only be considered after the proof-of-concept stage has delivered, using the understanding gained to make an informed decision. As a deliverable of the phase-1 project, successful bidders will be expected to produce a costed plan of recommended future work to be carried out.

Read important information on what all CDE proposals must include. Proposals that don’t include the required information are unlikely to be successful.

Proposals will be assessed by subject matter experts from MOD and Dstl using the MOD Performance Assessment Framework. Deliverables from contracts will be made available to technical partners and subject to review by UK MOD.

Dstl will be available to provide advice and/or guidance via an appointed technical partner throughout the project and provide the interface with MOD and wider government stakeholder community.

8. Important dates

9 July 2015	Competition briefing at Innovation Network event
16 July 2015	Webinar
10 September 2015	Competition closes at 5pm
November 2015	Contract placement initiated and feedback provided
28 August 2016	Latest date for the delivery of phase-1 proof-of-concept research
September 2016	Stakeholder demonstration event
End of September 2016	Phase-2 funding decisions made

9. Queries and help

While you’re preparing your proposals, you can contact us if you have any queries:

Technical queries about this competition should be sent to RIBICDE@dstl.gov.uk

Capacity to answer these queries is limited in terms of volume and scope. Queries should be limited to a few simple questions or if provided with a short (few paragraphs) description of your proposal, the technical team will provide, without commitment or prejudice, broad yes/no answers. This query facility is not to be used for extensive technical discussions, detailed review of proposals or supporting the iterative development of ideas. While all reasonable efforts will be made to answer queries, CDE and Dstl reserves the right to impose management controls when higher than average volumes of queries or resource demands restrict fair access to all potential proposal submitters.

General queries (including how to use the portal) should be sent directly to CDE at cde@dstl.gov.uk