Phase II Amount
$1,592,339
Smart Cities are everywhere. Foreign municipalities implement thousands of monitoring sensors to enable infrastructure management and population surveillance. This global trend in Smart City technology spending will only continue to increase, already growing from 81 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 to 189.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2023 (Statista). Of this amount, only 26% of global spending on Smart City technology initiatives is in the United States (Statista). On the contrary, China is currently deploying approximately 800 Smart City programs (Otonomo). As a result, Smart City infrastructure has become a severe threat vector on the urban battlefield. The reality of Smart City infrastructure, Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance (UTS), and commercial smart devices necessitate an immediate change in Special Operations Forces urban battlefield planning. Special Operations Forces need new ways to effectively conduct operations in Smart City environments that counter the malicious use of UTS, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), and Data Analysis. These new methods will need to be rapidly deployable in urban environments to model known Smart City and UTS elements, providing operators near-real-time feedback. This critical information will guide their ability to combat, circumvent, and exploit Smart City infrastructure for effective mission execution. Cities like Taipei, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and St. Petersburg all have a Smart City infrastructure throughout, including their urban maritime port areas and other critical infrastructure. The Certus Deployable Smart City Range solution will provide Special Operations with the flexible and agile training ranges and methodologies required for this critical mission. This solution will provide a mobile, easily deployable, and efficiently acquired system tailored to many complex environmental factors. The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution will include a Mobile and Deployable Range that contains sensors and actuators commonly found in Smart Cities. A Range Control will monitor trainee progress within a Fixed Lab tailored for urban and maritime environments. This system permits new sensor testing, data aggregation, and visualization components seamlessly integrating into the range. Advanced algorithm solutions enable range control to deploy their own AI/ML in real-time on streaming Smart City IoT data to gain insight into these systems and the operator's behavior. As a result of careful engineering decisions, operational training for this effective PaaS solution is exceptionally approachable. Certus Group was born out of the idea that transformational innovation is needed in many industries if were going to be able to meet the challenges ahead of us in the next two decades. Innovation, redefined is what we do.
