Levels of protective security in crowded places must be proportionate to the risk. They must ensure that if a terrorist attack does take place any loss of life or serious injury are minimised. However, individuals and businesses must be free to carry on normal social, economic and democratic activities and, as a result, there will always be some vulnerability to terrorist attack.
It is difficult to detect terrorists in crowded places because they can easily conceal themselves within the crowd. Factors that may distinguish them from the benign majority are the tools of their trade (eg weapons), their behaviour and their intent. A great deal of effort is focussed on detecting the tools. In this instance we would like to concentrate on intent and behaviour.
Office for Security & Counter Terrorism (OSCT) is seeking innovative approaches to understand, characterise, detect and influence intent in crowded places with a view to reducing the risk of terrorist attacks. Proposals are sought across a range of domains eg. contextual, behavioural, physiological and neurological. Novel, inventive and lateral thinking is particularly welcome. Successful proposals will be sponsored by INSTINCT, the OSCT Innovation Programme.
A briefing event is being held by the Centre of Defence Enterprise at Harwell on 3rd June. It will be a mixture of presentations and informal discussions and provide attendees with further context on "Intent in crowded places", and background information on the INSTINCT programme.
To register, please see: http://www.science.mod.uk/Events/event_detail.aspx?eventid=28
Downloading the brief
The brief will be available after the seminar on 3rd June.