Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/1110844
community for the next 20 years," highlighted the Minster of National Defence Harjit S. Sajjan on the day of the launch. It is an access-to-innovation program built on three fundamental pillars: recruiting innovators, supporting innovation development, and maturing innovative ideas into products, all to resolve Cana- dian defence and security challenges. Challenges can cover all as- pects of the defence and security environment: large and complex problems, such as those related to surveillance in the North; or more targeted, such as how to reduce the burden on soldiers work- ing in extreme climatic environments. The program also recognizes that not all solutions are technical in nature – innovating process or changing procedures can also solve key challenges. Access to innovation and innovators The IDEaS program was developed to be inclusive to all Canadian innovators by not placing limitations on who is eligible to propose solutions. The result is a program for anyone who can think outside the box and help develop defence and security solutions from con- cepts, to prototypes, to near commercially ready solutions. There is equal opportunity for all innovators regardless of organizational size or affiliation. Exactly how the IDEaS program is transforming defence and se- curity research and development while contributing to Canada`s innovation community is evident in the example of two entre- preneurs from Toronto, Andrei Betlen and David Miller. Just out of the Ryerson Computer Science program and still in their early twenties, these young innovators submitted a proposal in response to one of the challenges from the IDEaS program's first call, titled "What is in full motion video" – a challenge designed to get new ideas on how to automate imagery analysis. After a rigorous assessment of their proposal under the IDEaS review process, the young men were awarded a contract for al- most $150,000 to further develop their project "Full Motion Video Analysis: Generation and Aug- mentation of Datasets for Deep Learn- ing." This project is exploring how to train a computer to be able to recognize suspicious activities that could signal a security threat. If suc- cessful, this would be the first step in a complex process that would allow analysts to effectively monitor multiple feeds simultaneously. www.vanguardcanada.com APRIL/MAY 2019 25 deFenCe PoLiCY Photo: The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.