SUNRISE at the Cyprus Defence & Security Conference (CYPSEC) 2023

Nicosia, Cyprus

SUNRISE partners SKYLD LTD recently attended this year’s Cyprus Defence & Security Conference (CYPSEC) representing both the project and the Defense and Security industry in Cyprus. As an exhibitor, they presented the SUNRISE project to the audience which included the Ministry of Defence, the Chief and senior officials of the National Guard, representatives of ministries and other interested Cypriot authorities, representatives of EU member states, international organizations and the international defence industry.

The organization of the conference follows the new 5-year term of the Presidency of the Republic of Cyprus and the corresponding appointments of new administration of the MoD & National Guard, the lifting of the US embargo and the new geopolitical issues in the wider Eastern Mediterranean region related to energy and not only, which will be high on the agenda for the next period of time.

The aim of the conference is to present the capabilities of the most modern and effective technology in Defense & Security matters to the new Cypriot authorities, in the context of today’s unstable international environment which is full of security challenges. Dealing with these challenges requires, in addition to continuous diplomatic efforts, the exchange of knowledge and cooperation, especially with large technological players.

Within the SUNRISE project, SKYLD play a technical role by contributing to the design of the SUNRISE tools and more specifically, they are working on the creation of it’s tool for remote infrastructure inspection. Through their expertise in developing novel ICT solutions, their team will provide aerial platforms and the means for the tool to obtain footage from the area of interest and visualise the physical infrastructure via satellite images. To validate the tool, SKYLD will also perform demonstrations of the technology.

With this in mind, what makes conferences such as CYPSEC and projects such as SUNRISE important? In summary, critical infrastructure resilience and citizen protection is the cornerstone of development in modern societies, particularly following major world crises such as Covid-19 and the ongoing climate crisis. Modern technology in the area of security and defence is key to achieving this and the technology driven solutions presented at conferences such as CYPSEC and via collaborative research projects such as SUNRISE bring these tools to realisation.

The response to Covid-19 accelerated the trend of digitalising security and defence and as Lowe (2022) puts it “the substantial
increase in digital social protection during the pandemic looks set to remain for the long term”.

Stay tuned for more similar events participated in by the SUNRISE partners.

References:

Lowe, C. (2022). The digitalisation of social protection before and since the onset of Covid-19: https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/ODI_Working_paper_Digitalisation_of_social_protection.pdf