The Resilience Beyond Observed Capabilities Network Plus (RBOC Network+) is pleased to invite you to attend a workshop on understanding how security threats in the future may challenge or be challenged by, the resilience of location intelligence.

We are organising one workshop. One workshop will be in Edinburgh on 29th February 2024.

What is the RBOC Network+?

The Resilience Beyond Observed Capabilities Network Plus (RBOC N+) is designed to create new knowledge, new capabilities and new opportunities for collaboration to help the UK prepare for security and resilience related challenges in the coming decades. The activities of the RBOC N+ will be built around a scenario of a catastrophic hybrid cyber-attack on digital and energy networks in the year 2051 by hostile actors. RBOC Network+ will convene some of the UK's leading experts in engineering, physical sciences, mathematics, health sciences, social and behavioural sciences, arts and humanities, and cross-disciplinary topics such as AI, security studies and urban planning, together with government and industry, to refine, deepen and test this scenario and to use it to explore how the UK can become more resilient to such events.

The RBOC Network+ is built around three core objectives related to Insight, Innovation, and Impact:

INSIGHT: in responding to the scenario, the RBOC Network+ will investigate what capabilities, techniques, and vulnerabilities can be exploited by adversaries to mount high-impact attacks against the UK, and what capabilities (technological, organisational, legal and behavioural) could be used by public authorities (central government, local authorities, first responders) to prepare for and respond to such attacks.

INNOVATION: To develop, accelerate and apply these capabilities to prepare for, respond to, recover, and mitigate threats, the N+ will lead and facilitate the production of original research using novel combinations of disciplines and methods, and build new relationships between researchers, policymakers and practitioners in governments and industry. It will also develop a ’safe space’ simulator for modelling the scenario with outputs, providing insights to policy and practice implications, impacts, and research gaps.

IMPACT: RBOC’s research and networks will initiate and facilitate the creation of new understanding and capabilities for government and industry to prepare for, respond to, and mitigate the impacts of major attacks from hostile actors.

What is the RBOC Network+ Scenario?

The scenario upon which this Network+ will focus is of a major disaster taking place in a densely populated future urban setting. The scenario has been designed to capture how moving 'downstream' from the attack (minutes to months) a series of concatenated impacts and threats emerge rippling out to different sectors of the economy and society, compounding and interacting with each other, to configure new and evolving challenges for the responding authorities to engage with.

In the context of the RBOC Network+ this scenario is: “ a coordinated, sophisticated and catastrophic hybrid cyber-attack on a UK city on 11 January 2051”

In the scenario, the hostile actor has capitalized on multiple existing vulnerabilities in devices and networks, and introduced its own supply chain attacks to mount a complex set of simultaneous attacks on smart grids infrastructure, smart grid administrations systems, supervisory and data acquisition systems, and 7G radio networks in the city.

The ability to engage citizens in the response is hampered by a sophisticated misinformation campaign by the hostile actor. This campaign exploits a pre-existing anti-technology social movement, which sees the events in the city as validating their claims that technology is being used as a means of surveillance and control.

The purpose of the workshop is to help us understand how location data and infrastructure can develop resilience over the coming decades.

In our catastrophic scenario, the attack results in the telecommunications infrastructure and location services going down among many other things. So how would responders declare a major incident and how would they collect and communicate the necessary information required to command, control and coordinate an effective and efficient response? And how would they be able to map and share that data with partners? There are also key questions around how responders would be able to understand and communicate the exact location and type of associated incidents occurring throughout Greater Manchester. This is before you get into even more complex issues such as communicating hazards and casualties, as well as where is accessible and where is not.

The workshop will therefore help us imaginatively explore these issues and think about them from a pre-event, response, and recovery perspective.

The workshop will be split in to three related sessions.

Session 1: Understanding the development of location intelligence between now and 2051 (pre-event)

• How might geospatial data and infrastructure evolve over the coming decades?
• How might location intelligence be exploited by an attacker between now and 2051?

Session 2: Identifying location intelligence issues during and post event

• How can we utilise multi-domain systems/sensors/platforms in near real-time for developing geospatial common operating pictures for responders and decision makers?
• What will future geospatial infrastructure need to include to be resilient in the context of a catastrophic attack on digital infrastructure?;
• How will responders be able to overcome challenges, including connectivity, to provide real-time data and information?

Session 3: Actionable research questions on trust

• What do we need to know?
• Who do we need involved?
• What skills and capabilities?

 

This workshop is open to academic RBOC Network+ members and RBOC Network+ Project Partners. The workshop has capacity for 25 people, and we have some funding available to cover reasonable travel expenses (which we will book for you). This funding is only available to researchers employed within higher education institutions in the UK and who are members of the RBOC Network+. If you are not a member, you can register here to become a member.

Due to the conditions of the grant, funding is not available for non-academic partners.

As places are limited, they will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis.

 

How to apply to attend:

Please register your interest in attending this workshop here: REGISTER HERE

 

Contact Us: If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at rbocnetwork@coventry.ac.uk