Thorp was one of the largest construction projects of its day, ranking alongside the Channel Tunnel and Disneyland Paris in sheer scale and ambition.

Thousands of workers descended onto Cumbria to help tackle some of the most unique engineering challenges in the world.

Thorp: The largest construction project of the eighties

At a third of a mile long, the cabling inside it could stretch from Whitehaven to Warsaw and parts of it were built knowing people would never be able to go back to those areas while it was operating as a reprocessing plant.

Thorp changed communities, changed Sellafield and changed the face of the world’s nuclear industry.

Archive clip on Thorp construction

Published 26 October 2018

The first hackathon will focus on real-world incident response and take place on 26-27 November 2018.

The second will be a defence logistics hackathon, taking place on 29-30 November 2018.

For these events, we are looking to bring together the best from academia, industry and government in the defence and security arena.

Brief details about the hackathons are as follows:

Real-World Incident Response Hackathon

This Hackathon will focus on improving the way we investigate incidents through the application of Multimedia Analysis and Artificial Intelligence.

Further details are available on the Real-World Incident Hackathon page.

Defence Logistics Hackathon

This hackathon will focus on accelerating Logistics Decision Support through exploiting Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) capabilities.

Further details are available on the Defence Logistics Hackathon page.

Published 26 October 2018

The DASA Real-World Incident Hackathon will take place on 26-27 November in Central London.

This hackathon will focus on improving the way we investigate incidents through the application of Multimedia Analysis and Artificial Intelligence.

Participants will be asked to process large amounts of real-world incident multimedia data and rapidly identify key information for on-site experts – people, places, events, in fact anything that may assist an investigations team.

We’re interested in how entities relate to each other, the event timeline and narrative, and near-term predictions. Data will mostly take the form of video which will be varied in quality, source, and format. Some will be live-streamed during the event.

This is a unique opportunity for participants to demonstrate their ability to extract useful information and insights from large multimedia data sources which would help teams to respond to incidents more quickly and effectively. We expect participants to exploit cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence techniques, including Machine Vision, to achieve the best results.

At the end of the second day a final prize presentation will take place.

To register for the event, please visit the Eventbrite page.

If you have any questions then please email accelerator@dstl.gov.uk with the title Real-World Incident hackathon in the subject line.

The Defence Logistics hackathon will be taking place on 29-30 November 2018 in Central London.

We are looking to bring together the best from academia, industry and government in the defence and security arena.

This hackathon will focus on accelerating Logistics Decision Support through exploiting Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) capabilities.

The intent of this hackathon is to demonstrate the ability to analyse and share structured and unstructured multi-source data; maintaining its classification and permission based access rules at machine speed. Data sets from the C130J Hercules platform will be provided to enable the development and testing of potential sharing solutions. The longer-term aim will be the development of predictive maintenance tools, and provides evidence based recommendations to optimise inventory checks and extend the life of components.

This event will require programmers and coders at the leading edge of current technology to develop an AI/ML capability that can be accessed, interrogated and translated to provide better informed and timely decision support across national and multinational domains.

This event will provide a great opportunity to demonstrate your ability to solve current Defence Logistic challenges, as well as the opportunity to network with senior decision makers and end users within this area. Following the event you will be invited to submit a fully costed proposal which could lead to securing funding to further develop your product.

To register for the event, please visit the Eventbrite page.

If you have any questions then please email accelerator@dstl.gov.uk with the title Defence Logistics hackathon in the subject line.