CBRNE Ltd

On May 13th. PROACTIVE will be actively present in the third Joint Activity (or Exercise) in Ranst (Belgium), where an exercise is organised by Campus Vesta (as an active consortium partner of the eNOTICE project with which PROACTIVE has an agreement of cooperation).

In preparation of this exercise, the PROACTIVE and Campus Vesta Planning Teams engaged in a successful discussion on key elements of the management of the exercise at Campus Vesta’ s premises.

Between Monday the 27th and Tuesday the 28th of February, the PROACTIVE team had intensive meetings with the Belgian colleagues. Partners included Tony Godwin and Dominic Kelly from CBRNE Ltd. (PROACTIVE Exercise Planning Leader), Daniel Strömberg, Åsa Burlin and Per-Erik Johansson from Umeå University in Sweden (PROACTIVE Exercise Direction in Ranst), Dale Weston from UKHSA (PROACTIVE Evaluation Lead of all three exercises) and Danielle Carbon from DHPol in Germany (PROACTIVE Exercise Direction in the previous joint exercises).

The planning hosts of Campus Vesta, Including Pieter Van Turnhout (General Manager), Wendy Van den Branden (director), Ronald Ackermans (director) Maaike van de Vorst (eNOTICE project coordinator at Campus Vesta ) and Luc Calluy, organised key meetings with Civil Society Representatives to steer the recruitment of volunteers.

Both teams jointly visited the location where the exercise will take place.

PROACTIVE developed a guideline on how to improve the protection of children within the CBRNe environment. The final document can be accessed via the following link: https://proactive-h2020.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Proactive-Policy-Brief-2-ERC28-02.pdf

CBRNE Ltd (UK). and Umeå University (Sweden) successfully completed the 1^st Field Exercise Planning Meeting to manage the third PROACTIVE/eNOTICE exercise in Ranst, Belgium to take place on the 13^th May 2023. The meeting on January 10^th in Barcelona took place prior to the 14^th  PROACTIVE Progress Meeting on June 11^th and 12th.

Project partner ETICAS (Spain) hosted the 14^th Progress Meeting in their headquarters near Plaza España, Barcelona. On behalf of CBRNE, Dominic Kelly, Tony Godwin, Irina Marsh, Danielle Carbon, and Nigel Hale presented the recent activities of CBRNE’s Work packages. Updates were made on the management of the Practitioners Stakeholder Advisory Board, the planning process of the Ranst exercise, the final deliverable of the Rieti exercise in last November, and the upcoming Aide Memoire for enlisting vulnerable people in CBRNe exercises and trainings.

First impressions can be found on PROACTIVE’s LinkedIn profile.

CBRNE Ltd on Wednesday 16th November 2022 successfully completed the management of Project PROACTIVE’s second field exercise in Rieti, Italy in conjunction with the exercise host, Scuola Interforze per la Difesa NBC (Italian NBC School). The latter organisation is a partner of Horizon 2020 Project eNOTICE which provides venues for CBRNE exercises. Uniquely the exercise included 30 civilians including those with vulnerabilities. The Practioners included the Carabinieri, fire fighters, Italian Red Cross, practioners from the Sampling and Identification of Biological, Chemical, and Radiological Agents (SIBCRA) unit and the Italian army. The scenario surrounded the release of chlorine at an indoor train station. Italian Railway Employees immediately initiated evacuation measures, after which the Practitioners performed triage, sampling, detection and decontamination activities outside.

As the PROACTIVE exercise director of the Rieti exercise, CBRNE Ltd was the key point of contact with the NBC School ensuring each party’s tactical and strategic aims and objectives were mutually compatible and effective. CBRNE Ltd was also responsible for ensuring the Use Case Scenario played out by the hosts of the field exercise were applicable to the PROACTIVE evaluation criteria. The evaluation of the exercise was led by a team from the PROACTIVE partner UKHSA. Apart from the evaluators, 15 international PROACTIVE and eNOTICE observers from six different countries collected relevant observational data.

PROACTIVE and eNOTICE at NBC School following the post-exercise joint evaluation Workshop

PROACTIVE installed various security measures of ethics, health and safety, data protection and dignity to protect the involved civilians. As part of this, CBRNE Ltd was responsible for managing the multiple processes which included detailed briefings of all parties, transportation arrangements, the video and photography team, catering company and most importantly the handling of the personal possessions of the civilian volunteers throughout the wet decontamination phase. With the help of the University of Rome, Save the Children (Italy), CARITAS and local Rieti inhabitants, CBRNE Ltd also managed the recruitment and registration of volunteers in advance, ensuring their safe attendance during the exercise and coordinating their feedback to UKHSA via focus groups at the end of the exercise.

The PROACTIVE core-planning team at the Exercise Area after the successful exercise (Tony Godwin, Andreas Arnold, Nigel Hale, Danielle Carbon, Dominic Kelly, Irina Marsh)

Photographs and video content will be released soon. The evaluation and observational data can be found in the upcoming PROACTIVE Deliverable D6.4 which will be available on the project’s webpage (https://proactive-h2020.eu/). If you are interested in the previous exercise in Dortmund, please check out Deliverable D6.3 and the videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnSRDun5W3iaRRl8LAGXew).

On Wednesday 2^nd November Dominic Kelly, Managing Director of CBRNE Ltd represented EU Horizon 2020 Project PROACTIVE at the NEEDS Conference https://jura.ku.dk/cilg/calendar/2022/needs-2022/ in Copenhagen, Denmark.  The title of his presentation which was given on behalf of Åsa Burlin from European CBRNE Center UMEA University was: “Involving Vulnerable Groups in CBRNe incident training – Ethical Considerations and Risks Worth Taking”

Alongside him giving presentations were Shya Uekusa from University of Canterbury who spoke on “Invisible vulnerability” Linguistically minoritized/marginalised people in disasters, emergencies and crises and Alexandra Olson from EENA – the European Emergency Number Association who spoke about “Towards more inclusive crisis communication” and lastly Kristi Nero from the University of Tartu who spoke about “Caring organisations role as intermediaries between the authorities and the marginalised in crisis communications”

The session was chaired by Tor-Olav Naevestad of The Institute of Transport Economics, Oslo, Norway.

Dominic Kelly representing Project PROACTIVE at the NEEDS conference 2nd Nov 2022

CBRNE Ltd took part, on Thursday 27^th October 2022, in the Kick off Meeting of Project ULTIMATE (mULti-level Trustworthiness to IMprove the Adoption of hybrid arTificial  intelligence) at the headquarters of Thales Research and Technology in Palaiseau, Paris.  The project includes Robotnik Automation (ROB) (Spain), Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan (KTH) (Sweden), Laboratoire National de Metrologie et D’Essais (LNE) (France), Fundacion Tecnalia Research & Innovation  (TEC) (Spain), Siec Badawcza Lukasiewicz – Przemyslowy Instytut Automatyki I Pomiarow (PIAP) (Poland), ITTI Sp Zoo (ITTI (Poland) and Thales Alenia Space Franc SAS (TAS) (France).

The ULTIMATE project will conduct research and innovation activities in the field of hybrid AI algorithm trained on data and model-based systems. The development of the algorithms will ease the adoption (trustworthiness) of hybrid AI for application in complex and industrial environments. The novelty of the project lies in the development of new methodologies for modelling physical limitations and constraints as experienced by humans. The project aims to improve the ability of AI algorithms to improve situational awareness and translate the signals to aid in the decision support system. Uniquely the project will demonstrate the hybrid AI algorithms in real-life environments under controlled settings to showcase the performance evaluation of the project outcomes.

The consortium partners of project ULTIMATE at the Kick off Meeting at Thales Research and Technology in Paris

On November 16 2022, PROACTIVE will deliver its second CBRNe exercise in Rieti, Italy.

The exercise is organised as a joint activity with the European research project eNOTICE (European Network of CBRN Training Centers) and its project partners Scuola Interforze per la Difesa NBC and University of Rome Tor Vergata.

As Work Package Lead for organising the three field exercises in PROACTIVE, CBRNE Ltd. is in the final hot planning phase which includes the recruitment of civilians with and without vulnerabilities.

We are already looking forward to learning lessons regarding the inclusion of vulnerable civilians in CBRNe training activities.

For a first glimpse of what will happen in Rieti, watch our video of the first decontamination exercise that took place in Dortmund earlier in 2022:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI-oo5YFWEE&t=4s

CBRNE Ltd is pleased to announce UKRI has appointed a Monitoring Officer with reference to Project ULTIMATE (mUlti-Level Trustworthiness to IMprove the Adoption of hybrid arTificial intelligence) as part of the UK Government European Union Horizon Europe Guarantee Scheme.  The project started on 1^st October and its Kick off Meeting is at the offices of the Coordinator Thales Research & Technology on 27^th October in Paris.

CBRNE Ltd led a PROACTIVE planning team to Rieti arriving on Monday 3^rd October and leaving on Thursday 6^th October in advance of the Field Exercise to take place on November 16^th.  The team consisted of Tony Godwin and Dominic Kelly from CBRNE Ltd. (Exercise Planning Lead for the Rieti exercise), Danielle Carbon and Andreas Arnold from DHPol [German Police University] (Exercise Planning Lead of previous Dortmund exercise), Åsa Burlin from Umeå University (Sweden) (Exercise Planning Lead of the upcoming 2023 Ranst, Netherlands exercise) and Dale Weston from UKHSA (Evaluation Lead of all three exercises).

Key events included meeting Major Giampaolo Santini and Marco Carosi from NBC Defence School and Daniele Di Giovanni and Grace Xerri from University Tor Vergata at the site of the proposed field exercise.

This was followed with Dominic Kelly and Francesco Graziani of Save the Children (Italy) having one to one meetings with CARITAS and CSV Lazio, being two charitable organisations based in Rieti to discuss the recruitment of volunteers.

Dominic Kelly with Paola Mariangeli (CSV) and Francesco Graziani (STC)

Whilst these meeting were going on the rest of the team visited the CARITAS shop in Rieti and purchased large amounts of second hand clothing to be used in the exercise.  This was left in storage for our return together with other logistical equipment.

The PROACTIVE planning team visiting the CARITAS Rieti to buy spare clothes for volunteers.

The DHPol team registered all procurements.

A hybrid PROACTIVE online meeting was held to discuss the ethical implications of the project with Irina Marsh from CBRNE Ltd. and Mariano Zamorano from ETICAS. As a special guest, Francesco Graziani from Save the Children (Italy) participated to discuss the recruitment of child volunteers.  This was followed by face to face meeting with Dr Daniele Di Giovanni, Grace Xerri and Prof. Piergianni Medaglia of CARIS Services for students with disabilities of SLD (Specific Learning Difficulties) and Francisco Graziani from Save the Children (Italy) to discuss the recruitment of volunteers for the exercise.

Dale Weston, Andreas Arnold, Tony Godwin, Grace Xerri, Danielle Carbon, Daniele di Giovani, Francesco Graziani and Dominic Kelly at University Rome Tor Vergata.

CBRNE subject matter expert has co-edited a book titled “Security Technology and Social Implications”, published by Wiley-IEEE Press. For addtional details and place an order of the copy, please visit: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Security+Technologies+and+Social+Implications-p-9781119834168

CBRNE is a partner in Project ALIGNER and its sister project “popAI” has posted a crowdsourcing platform for discussions on AI in law enforcement.  Please feel free to join the discussion by following this link: https://crowdsourcing.ecas.org/en/popai

If you want additional information you can get it via: https://www.pop-ai.eu/get-involved-in-popai-crowdsourcing-activity/

In addition to the news below regarding Project PROACTIVE’s 13^th Project Meeting which was hosted by the Polish National Police more details can be found here: https://uic.org/com/enews/article/the-eu-proactive-project-holds-its-thirteenth-consortium-meeting-in-warsaw

CBRNE Ltd. currently manages the Advisory Boards of three European Horizon research projects in the field of CBRNE and of AI: PROACTIVE, ALIGNER and ULTIMATE.

Do you want to contribute to one of the projects with your expertise and exchange experiences with European stakeholders? Contact CBRNE Ltd. to get more information on the boards including the aims and objectives of the projects and how to become an Advisory Board member ( info@cbrneltd-com.preview-domain.com or danielle.carbon@cbrneltd-com.preview-domain.com).

Project PROACTIVE held its 13^th Progress Meeting on the 6^th and 7^th September in Warsaw, Poland at National Police Headquarters (NPH).  Dominic Kelly, Tony Godwin and Danielle Carbon attended on behalf of CBRNE Ltd.  Much time was spent planning for PROACTIVE’s second field exercise in Rieti (Italy) on 16^th November.  CBRNE is leading the Work Package for all three field exercises. The exercises will benefit from the observations of the invited CBRNe experts that are part of the project’s Practitioner and Stakeholder Advisory Board (PSAB). In this regard, CBRNE Ltd. presented the current board structure and the ongoing recruitment and engagement strategy.