Company insight
routes for new infrastructure projects. Moving towards operational decision support, a public/private geodata representation system can narrow down search areas for IED surveys after by, for example, an observation of a suspicious situation. Secure exchange of private asset survey data showing where CUI is exposed above the seabed reveals locations where adversary operations are easier to execute and may drive a risk- based response survey for IED’s.
The danger posed toward critical underwater infrastructure (CUI) is greater than ever.
“Although commercial solutions like asset sonar surveys and ROVs for manipulation of potential IED’s are available, their effectiveness in mitigating risks to CUI is not yet fully determined.”
systems, especially combined with an anomaly detection algorithm that is able to recognise suspicious activity, such as slowing down or loitering at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
■ Underwater situational awareness: Current capabilities are limited, but technology is evolving rapidly.
■ Commercial or military surveys for security, using sonar systems to detect IED’s near CUI.
■ Improved CUI resilience: This could be by redundancy, hardening or the ability to be repaired quickly, mitigating the risk as the target is considered to be less attractive to opponents.
Understanding time and space Most of the factors listed above are a
function of place and time. Therefore, a geo-referenced approach to presenting the interaction of those factors is a logical approach to think about risk. The Dutch Ministry of Defence and TNO have invested in data format agnostic software to handle public, private, industrial and governmental geodata sets, thus facilitating a multi-stakeholder/whole of society approach to evaluate risks to current and future CUI.
A first low-fidelity quantitative risk assessment of the threat posed by diver scenarios has shown that this approach helps to identify critical zones with an elevated risk level. Insights like these may help governments to direct their resources for surveillance over these zones, but they may also help to plan
Keeping ahead of the curve The effectiveness of operations depends on information. We assume for the time being that the Netherlands will organise its information management in such a way that information is protected, available on a need-to-know basis up to the level of detail that is requested and available for those who need it to perform security operations.
Although commercial solutions like asset sonar surveys and ROVs for manipulation of potential IED’s are available, their effectiveness in mitigating risks to CUI is not yet fully determined. The scenario-driven approach described above will also be the logical basis for innovative capability requirements for navies and industries alike that might result in new technology development. Within the framework of the Northern Naval Capability Cooperation (NNCC) a Seabed Security and Experimentation Centre (SeaSEC) was opened on 7 December in the port of Scheveningen (NL). The SeaSEC facility will be used for joint public-private operational testing and evaluation of currently available commercial and military technologies and speed up their effective application at sea. SeaSEC is a place for ‘learning by doing’ that is available for the industries of the six constituting nations of the NNCC: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. It is foreseeable that SeaSEC will also attract NATO and EU partners to discuss scenarios for enhancing the security of our CUI by using the VBED data representation system. TNO and its partner institutes in Europe are ready to support these efforts in every way possible. ●
The SeaSEC facility will conduct operational testing and evaluation of commercial and military technologies. Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
www.tno.nl 19
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