Example use case

A delegation of government officials is expected to occupy a building in an on overseas city while
attending a trade and business investment seminar. Sensitive conversations and activities will need
to take place in the building, and it is important these are protected.

Once the building has been selected, it is important that it is secured as soon possible ensuring it
hasn’t been compromised prior to government officials occupying this space. The officials may also
need to be away travelling for some of the time when in the country, so they must have the
confidence that, even if the building is left unoccupied, there is no chance that unauthorised intrusion
can have taken place. The temporary building will already have been furnished with a level of
protection meeting certain UK government security standards.

This particular overseas location does not have a reliable power infrastructure, so power outages
can take place. Although the building has a back-up system, this will only provide power for a limited
period. Prolonged outages could mean that crucial systems, such as an intruder monitoring system,
could be interrupted.

Project scope

The output of the 12-week project should focus on demonstrating technology that shows potential
for follow-on projects. This is open to Technology Readiness Levels from 4 – 7, and could focus on
different parts of the challenge, such as:

1. High-tech sensors for intruder monitoring.
2. Full system development, considering ease of use (e.g., sensors easy to install, GUI, etc.).
3. Encrypted communication to ensure that information captured from the sensors has a low
probability of interception.

Mandatory targets for a solution are listed below. This doesn’t necessarily need to be solved
during the 12-week project, but a clear path to provide a solution for this must be considered:

•  Must sense human presence in an environment.
• Must be power efficient and be able to run for extended periods of time without mains power
  (although backup power doesn’t have to part of the solution).
• Must demonstrate that it is (or could be) useable and deployable to non-technical personnel.
• Must be scalable to be deployed from a single room up to a large-scale facility.
• Must offer remote monitoring in real time.
• Must be usable world-wide.
• A full system must have an API to allow integration into existing monitoring solutions.
• Must have anti-tamper and anti-jamming capability.
• The system must comply with International Air Transport Association (IATA) dangerous goods
  regulations (such as lithium battery regulations used as backup power options) to enable
  transport on regular commercial flights.

Things to consider:

• The communication from the sensor/processor to the user should be encrypted.
• It could use low-power processing methods such as edge artificial intelligence reducing power consumption.
• It could have different modes of operation, for example if a system uses multiple sensors, then power saving modes could be initiated to turn off certain sensors.
• During development, an alarm system does not need to conform to BS-EN50131, but this should be considered for future phases of work.
• The solution could sense if a perimeter has been compromised by non-human presence outside the specified boundary (e.g. a drone).
• The system should be small enough to be easily carried by a person, for example aircraft cabin bag size.
• The system should be able to securely log data locally, for instances when the remote monitoring link is unavailable.
• The system should be able to push notifications to end users.
• The system could have multi-sensor verification.

Please note:

This challenge will not consider solutions using basic sensors such as passive infrared (PIR) and
cameras.

Eligibility

This challenge is open to sole innovators, industry, academic and research organisations of all types
and sizes. There is no requirement for security clearances.

Solution providers or direct collaboration from countries listed by the UK government under trade
sanctions and/or arms embargoes, are not eligible for HMGCC Co-Creation challenges.