HADR Start-Up Weekend

At the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) we are looking for creative, innovative ideas in places we haven’t looked before.

Recently the NZDF sponsored a Start-Up Weekend based on Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Response solutions. It was an opportunity to be presented with new, different ideas on how we can deliver HADR capability, both domestically and offshore.

The weekend was organised to see what kind of ‘out of the box’ solutions to HADR challenges could be developed by casting fresh eyes on the problem. The NZDF provided mentors with recent experience in HADR operations. These mentors were able to provide the participants with first hand experiences of the real challenges they faced on HADR operations and provided a sounding board for the groups’ ideas.

The weekend was also a way to expose ourselves to a different way of thinking — a more agile design-thinking environment. The groups were only given 54 hours, but by the end of it they had taken simple ideas and developed working prototypes of their solutions.

The winning idea from the weekend was called Situate Me. The group used a ‘soft’ AI chat bot to crowdsource a human terrain map of an area post-disaster. This would be presented as a dashboard for emergency responders, which would allow them to better prioritise efforts.

Other ideas ranged from using AI to map out the interior of building to generating mobile networks without infrastructure using WiFi mesh nets.

We hope to meet more innovative thinkers like these participants in the future as the NZDF increases its engagement in innovation and emerging technology.