The Future of Aviation Security

This Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) themed competition seeks new technologies and approaches to improve our ability to detect the widest possible range of explosives, weapons and other threat materials that can be taken on board an aircraft.

As the aviation sector continues to grow, the threat to aviation security continues to evolve. Through this competition we want to help the government, the Civil Aviation Authority and the aviation industry continue to improve airport security processes by staying ahead of evolving threats and maintaining a high level of confidence in threat detection.

This competition is seeking new technologies and approaches to enhance threat detection while minimising the inconvenience of undergoing screening and of carrying out that screening. There should be a positive impact on the customer and the operator, and be in line with the government’s priorities to create a safer, more secure and sustainable transport system for all.

This CDE competition seeks proposals to the following 2 challenges:

• Screening of people and their hand luggage
• Screening of aviation cargo and hold luggage

What the CDE are looking for

The CDE is looking for ambitious and innovative proposals to develop to TRL 4 at the end of phase 1. Where possible you should state clearly the expected timescales for technology maturation through to a capability that could be used.

New solutions should help to prevent the widest possible range of explosives, weapons, and other threats against the aircraft.

At the end of phase 1, successful projects will be asked to demonstrate proof of concept of their technology to gain support from important stakeholders, and explain their proposed approach to transition the concept to a mature operational solution.

The CDE is interested in projects that consider a system approach, including the ability to integrate with other technologies in the system. However it is not expected for you to be able to provide a whole solution at phase 1. Your proposed technology could offer part of, or an important step towards, the solution to the challenge. Collaborate in any follow-on phase-2 projects is encouraged.

Where possible you should use open source, not bespoke, systems architecture to maximise potential for integration with current systems.

We will consider proposals for research into novel applications of existing technologies.

Whether your proposal integrates with existing (or near-to-market) technology, or develops a technology that leads to completely new systems, it’s important that you describe your exploitation path in relation to this, and demonstrate how your technology will deliver a step-change in aviation security.

The CDE won’t accept proposals over £100,000 and it’s more likely at this stage that a larger number of lower-value proposals around £40,000 to £80,000 will be funded than a small number of higher-value proposals. Total funding available for phase 1 of this competition is up to £1 million.

Phase 1 proposals must focus on a short, sharp, proof-of-concept phase with research lasting up to 6 months in duration for delivery by the end of September 2017.

Phase 1 proposals should include a descriptive scoping for a longer programme (phase 2 onwards) of any duration, but the proposal should be clearly partitioned with a coasted proof-of-concept stage, which is the focus of this CDE themed competition.