The 2024 call for proposals is now closed.
The public safety and security environment is highly complex, volatile, and rapidly evolving. The intent of the 2024 CSSP Call for Proposals was to leverage the innovative application of science and technology across the spectrum of safety and security.
Solutions submitted for the 2024 CSSP Call for Proposals address the following challenge areas:
- Wildfire intelligence – A common picture for detection and suppression
- Building stronger communities – Understanding and improving mass care in emergencies
- Identify and protect – Biometrics for defence and security
- Upholding Canada’s sovereignty – Border security and domain awareness
- Navigating the future – Fortifying Canada’s critical infrastructure with next gen positioning and timing
- Unmask the threat – Advancing technologies for the detection and identification of threat materials
- Shields up – Responding to neglected, emerging, and re-emerging diseases
- Safeguarding – Identifying and mitigating the risks of small modular reactors and radioactive sources
Results
| Project title | Organization |
|---|---|
| Wildfire Common Operating Picture (WCOP) | Parks Canada |
| Wildfire Digital Twins: An immersive solution for experimentation, design and training | Natural Resources Canada |
| Ottawa-Gatineau Public Private Partnership for Emergency Management | Ville de Gatineau |
| Mass Care Research, Mapping & Framework Development | Emergency Management and Programs Branch |
| Integrated Canadian Mass Care Planning | Ministry of EM and Climate Readiness |
| Space-based Monitoring, Alerts, and Tactical Awareness Knowledge (SMATAK) | Royal Canadian Mounted Police |
| Autonomous aircraft with SIGINT and multi-modal ISR capabilities for border security, SAR, and force multiplication | Department of National Defence |
| Hidden Risks: assessing Canadian PNT vulnerabilities due to gaps in Canada's Geodetic Supply Chain | Natural Resources Canada |
| Quantum-Resistant Anti-Spoofing Solution for Resilient and Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing | Canada Centre for Remote Sensing |
| Resilient GNSS for Time Transfer of UTC(NRC) for Critical Infrastructure Through Xona PULSAR Satellites | Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada |
| Transmission dynamics of Emerging Disease: Evaluating deadly zoonoses | Canadian Food Inspection Agency |
| Machine learning to assess the risk of avian influenza variants to animal, ecosystem, and public health | Canadian Food Inspection Agency |
| Advancing Resiliency for Agnostic Biological Threat Detection whilst Refining Federal Laboratory Surge Capacity | Public Health Agency of Canada |
| Development of Carbon Nanotube-based Materials for Enhanced Safety and Performance | Atomic Energy of Canada Limited |
| Development of a Comprehensive Threat and Hazard Library for SMRs and Nuclear Technologies in the North | Natural Resources Canada |
Wildfire intelligence – A common picture for detection and suppression
S&T challenge: Wildfire firefighting ‘common operating picture’
The 2023 wildfire season in Canada was unprecedented in terms of its severity compared to the wildfire seasons of the past several years. This increased public concern due to poor air quality and the threat of evacuations of affected communities. The economic impact as well as the effect on the general population (distress, evacuation, smoke) make wildfires one of the worst natural disasters.
The effective execution of wildfire fighting operations (from detection to attack to suppression) is one of the key elements in reducing the impact of severe wildfire seasons, which are expected to continue several years into the future due to the effects of climate change.
Another key element of wildfire fighting operations is the effective use of wildfire information (remote sensing data, propagation modelling forecasts, resource availability, etc) by the incident management team (IMT) commander, or commanders at provincial headquarters (HQ). However, this wildfire information (also called wildfire intelligence) often arrives at the IMT command piecemeal, presented in a variety of different tools or software. This can create confusion and render the wildfire fighting operations sub-optimal.
To this end, the Canadian Safety and Security Program (CSSP) is seeking innovative science and technology (S&T) solutions for:
- developing a “common operating picture” (CoP) for wildfire fighting operations, with emphasis on advancing capabilities that support incident commanders and wildfire fighters; and/or
- development of a “wildfire synthetic environment” (W-SE) for concept development and experimentation and to train IMT commanders. This would be used to enable the execution of wildfire “war games” that closely align to war games for defence in the Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) experimentation warfare centres.
Of interest are project proposals that entail building a system capable of ingesting fire intelligence from all different sources and presenting this information to an IMT (or HQ) commander in a coherent fashion, which would enable more effective and optimal decision-making. Due to the multi-jurisdictional nature of wildfire fighting, and the need to have such a CoP system and W-SE system available to all wildfire agencies in Canada, the developed systems need to be open architecture and have maximum interoperability with existing systems.
Building stronger communities – Understanding and improving mass care in emergencies
S&T challenge: Community resilience research
Mass care is evolving as a concept in emergency response and recovery globally and within Canada. Mass care is not just the delivery of humanitarian services. It involves a high degree of collaboration across the private, public, volunteer, and non-profit sectors to resolve the disaster-related unmet needs of affected individuals and communities. This includes the provision of life-sustaining assistance such as shelter, transportation, and human services (including mental health and reunification assistance) to disaster survivors with access and functional needs including seniors, children, individuals with disabilities, and individuals with chronic medical conditions or recurring pharmacological dependency.
A mass care capacity involves engaging the whole community, including under-served and vulnerable populations, giving agency to people while recognizing that there is a proactive component to response and recovery. At the heart of mass care is a need for unified, human-centered support to those affected and/or displaced by disasters, and to those who are more likely to need acute care in the future if enabling supports are nonexistent.
Defence Research and Development Canada’s CSSP is seeking innovative S&T project proposals that:
- identify or develop a better understanding of what is currently being provided across Canada in terms of mass care, and highlight key knowledge, technology or capacity gaps;
- design tools, methodologies and systems that facilitate the sharing of mass care resources and knowledge and enable improved collaboration across communities, regions, provinces and territories; and/or
- identify and define evidence-based approaches, best practices, and scientifically validated guidance for community led mass care delivery and coordination that will contribute to the mass care national dialogue, leading to disaster risk reduction.
Identify and protect – Biometrics for defence and security
S&T challenge: Biometrics for defence and security
Governments are required to authenticate and establish the identity of individuals for a multitude of reasons, from verifying the identity of persons entering the country or applying for official documents such as passports and driver’s licences, to identifying suspects in criminal and national security-related investigations, among other purposes.
Governments at all levels are seeking ways to improve their biometric recognition capabilities, while simultaneously protecting Canadians’ privacy and delivering programs and services that do not systematically discriminate against or disadvantage any demographic group.
This Call for Proposals is seeking innovative S&T solutions to enhance the government’s biometric recognition capabilities, with a particular emphasis on capabilities that support:
- border control/security and immigration;
- law enforcement/policing;
- defence/national security/intelligence operations; and/or
- physical and/or logical access control.
Of particular interest are projects that explicitly address or incorporate work to better understand:
- known or potential vulnerabilities/weaknesses in biometric technologies (e.g., presentation attacks/spoofing, photo-morphing, privacy/data security, demographic-based performance differentials);
- how biometric technologies can be utilized for deepfake/synthetic media detection; or,
- how biometric technologies interact with other elements in the system, including the human element.
Upholding Canada’s sovereignty – Border security and domain awareness
S&T challenge: Border security and domain awareness
Canada’s extensive perimeter, including its maritime regions and remote points of entry, presents the Government of Canada with daunting border security and domain awareness challenges. This includes the need to secure the long Canadian land border with the United States, perform surveillance of maritime and Arctic approaches, and ensure the efficient and secure flow of people, goods, and materials at air, land, and sea ports of entry.
This Call for Proposals is seeking innovative S&T solutions to enhance Canada's ability to protect and secure its land and/or maritime border, with a particular emphasis on any technologies or solutions that can address one or more of the following:
- enhancing Canada’s border services and search and rescue (SAR) capabilities in the North/Arctic, including SAR equipment and capabilities with limited personnel;
- surface platform concepts that can be used on ice and water, or semi-autonomous underwater vehicles, to combat activities such as the illegal transport of firearms and drugs or irregular migration carried out by underwater and/or surface vessels within Canada’s contiguous zone and maritime borders;
- studies and/or research into network architecture that increases interoperability between stove-piped enclaves or cloud services used by different departments for command and control (C2), domain awareness, surveillance, or intelligence, as well as remote operations for the types of platforms in (b);
- ensuring the effective screening of cargo and travellers; and
- detection of unregulated chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive (CBRNE) hazards.
Navigating the future – Fortifying Canada’s critical infrastructure with next gen positioning and timing
S&T challenge: Positioning, navigation and timing
Positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies, largely enabled by global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), underpin most modern infrastructures, operations, and functions. In addition to providing navigation information for airplanes, ships, and now autonomous vehicles, GPS/GNSS also provide critical timing information for communications networks, energy grids and financial exchanges. As London Economics describes, “GNSS is an umbrella term describing an infrastructure that provides PNT information via satellites orbiting in space. This information allows users with a compatible receiver (e.g., a smartphone) to determine their position, velocity and precise universal and local time.”
GPS/GNSS has become an “invisible” and essential utility. Critical infrastructures (CI) have become increasingly reliant on GPS/GNSS-based PNT data, as have a broad range of economic sectors and consumer applications, in Canada and elsewhere. However, many CI owners and operators are unaware of how their equipment performs when faced with a broad range of threats such as interference, jamming, spoofing, meaconing, cyber-attacks, space weather, and GPS/GNSS outages/operation failures. Due to the dynamic nature of PNT-related applications, technologies, and services, CI cannot keep pace with recent developments that have economic, safety, and security implications for Canada. Developments such as GPS/GNSS improvements and service offerings, alternative PNT technologies and services, new applications leveraging small satellites, situational awareness, and standards development could influence how a GNSS disruption impacts Canadian civilian uses now and into the future.
Furthermore, existing research and development (R&D) may not holistically address the Canadian context, such as the jurisdictional/structure or ownership of CI, interdependencies, dependency on open sharing of international data, R&D investments, fiscal climate and unique Canadian PNT requirements for services in the North (e.g. safe and secure Arctic navigation, and the need for increased GNSS radio occultation data to support accurate weather prediction systems in this region where conventional weather observations are sparse).
This Call for Proposals is seeking innovative S&T solutions aimed at increasing awareness of GPS dependencies, tools to assess operational vulnerabilities, and the development of alternative and complementary PNT technologies to build PNT resilience for Canada’s civilian critical infrastructure. Of particular interest are technologies or solutions that can address one or more of the following:
- Increased awareness of GNSS uses and vulnerabilities:
- studies on GNSS dependencies in Canadian CI sectors (e.g. creating PNT profiles for various use cases);
- studies on impacts of GNSS disruptions;
- studies that will increase awareness of GNSS vulnerabilities;
- development and demonstration of technologies that will improve situational awareness in the event of a GNSS disruption.
- Operational vulnerabilities assessments:
- development and demonstration of tools to assess or provide situational awareness of the operating environment or user equipment response under threat;
- testing of device performance in unfavourable operating conditions (e.g., interference, spoofing, in the presence of space weather phenomena);
- simulations of a GNSS disruption and its impacts.
- Development and demonstration of alternative and complementary PNT technologies:
- studies on the potential of alternative and complementary PNT technologies;
- technology development (hardware, software) for improved PNT resiliency;
- demonstrations of assured PNT performance in the event of a GNSS disruption.
Unmask the threat – Advancing technologies for the detection and identification of threat materials
S&T challenge: Detection of threat materials
The risk posed by chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) events continues to be of significant concern and have the potential to overwhelm response capacities. Whether they result from natural events, accidental release, or hostile uses, the consequences of CBRNE incidents could have implications on national security, public safety, public confidence, the economy, the environment, and international relations. To prepare for such situations, Canada must have robust tools to anticipate, prevent, protect, and respond to CBRNE crisis situations in a timely and effective manner.
In pursuit of response preparedness to continually expanding and evolving CBRNE materials with increasingly sophisticated delivery methods, there must be improvements made to the tools and technologies to detect in the field.
This challenge accepts the following project types:
- Technology demonstration
- Technology pilot / feasibility studies
- R&D
Innovative S&T solutions are being sought to enable the development of CBRNE knowledge and capabilities to support emergency management preparedness and strengthen whole-of-society resilience against threats, hazards, and crises. Particularly, proposals are sought for S&T projects whose aim is to develop enhanced tools and methods for detection and identification of threat materials in the field, specifically:
- detection of toxins and high consequence pathogens;
- detection of explosive materials (home-made, industrial, and military) and precursors.
Shields up – Responding to neglected, emerging, and re-emerging diseases
S&T challenge: Preparation for neglected, emerging, and re-emerging diseases
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the requirement for Canada to be prepared for disease outbreaks with plans, procedures, risk assessment methods, adaptable testing, generic treatment options and broadly applicable public heath expertise. Maintaining capabilities and expertise between public health events can be a challenge and requires a significant amount of foresight and preparation.
This challenge accepts the following project types:
- Technology pilot / feasibility studies
- R&D
- Studies and analysis
Proposals are sought for S&T projects whose aim is to develop enhanced tools and methods for preparation to respond to neglected, emerging, and re-emerging diseases, specifically:
- studies to identify likely disease candidates;
- early ID and characterization;
- transmission studies for likely pathogens; and/or
- development of animal models.
Safeguarding – Identifying and mitigating the risks of small modular reactors and radioactive sources
S&T challenge: Risk reduction for small modular reactors (SMRs) and radiological and nuclear (RN) materials
The use of radioactive materials in research and industry comes with some inherent risks that the materials may be lost, stolen, or intentionally misused to cause harm to the public. Additionally, small modular reactors (SMRs) are increasingly being considered for energy generation, including in remote locations, and these come with additional risks for malicious or negligent use of the fuel required for these reactors.
This challenge accepts the following project types:
- Technology pilot / feasibility studies
- R&D
- Studies and analysis
Proposals are sought for S&T projects whose aim is anticipate, characterize, and offer potential solutions for the risks and perceived risks associated with the use of radioactive sources and small modular reactors, specifically:
- enhanced tracking or security for portable radioactive sources;
- characterization of vulnerabilities for maintaining and operating SMRs in remote locations; and/or
- technological solutions for increasing the safety of security of SMRs and their fuel.