London-based Improbable is teaming up with some of the country’s best universities for an initiative based around modelling and simulation technologies.
The firm will take academic research from the universities of Oxford, Durham, Bristol, Leeds and Manchester and make it “useful and usable” to government.
Dubbed the Myridian programme, it aims to help the UK and its allies in facing challenges such as climate change, humanitarian crises and threats posed by potential adversaries across air, land, sea, space and cyber.
CEO of Improbable’s Defence Division Joe Robinson said: “The world is increasingly unstable and threats to our security and national resilience are evolving at a frightening pace.
“If the UK is to compete successfully as the world order shifts, we need to ensure that the world-class research and innovation from across industry and academia is made available to the defence and national security organisations working to ensure our safety and prosperity.”
Improbable’s technology platform currently supports synthetic environments and digital twins for the British Army and UK Strategic Command.
It blends data, models and analytical tools to simulate real-world scenarios for training, planning and infrastructure management.
It is hoped the Myridian programme will give users at every level the tools they need to identify and respond to issues more quickly.
Improbable’s Chief Scientist, Professor Jordan Giddings, said: “There’s colossal potential for academic institutions and research organisations to contribute to solving some of society’s greatest challenges.
“The trouble is, government organisations currently lack the commercial and technical infrastructure to fully exploit the latest advances in fields like computational modelling and simulation, data analytics, AI and machine learning. The Myridian programme will facilitate this.”
Doyne Farmer, Baillie Gifford Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, said: “Contemporary society is both more complex and more fragile than ever.
“But just as technology can be used to undermine our societies, it can also be used to strengthen them – whether that’s against threats to our political processes, critical infrastructure or threats arising from climate change.”