British Army Launches Digital Decision Support Engine

• Built by Hadean and Cervus, the Forge will use web3 technology to automate and optimise decision making in complex scenarios

Hadean and Cervus have launched The Forge, a digital decision support engine which uses a number of emerging distributed and spatial web technologies to solve DASA's 'Simulating Future Battlespace Complexity' challenge, will be unveiled on 26 April at IT²EC 2022 in London. Attendees can visit booth F14 for a preview of the technology and more information.

The project is funded by the Ministry of Defence’s Defence and Security Accelerator and is being brought-to-life by web3 startup Hadean and innovation services company Cervus. Over the past year, Hadean and Cervus have been working to create a tool that reduces the time and resources needed to rationalise complex problems, enables robust and repeatable experimentation, and demonstrably improves the evidence trail underpinning decision outcomes.

The Forge uses a combination of new web3 technologies to automate decision making for rapid analysis of scenarios in increasingly complex battle spaces and against new forms of threat. A historically slow process which often involves many compromises and subjective viewpoints will now be optimised with a precise, data-driven approach, ensuring key opportunities can be captured at the pace of relevance, and not be overtaken by rapidly shifting circumstances.

Speaking on the project, CEO and co-founder Craig Beddis said "The idea of using the Hadean platform as part of a decision support system began in our relatively small innovation department, speaking volumes to its potential for new kinds of applications. By integrating distributed computing with Cervus' cutting-edge AI (artificial intelligence), we're able to bring something truly new to the table using these emerging technologies. In defence, we understand digital transformation as one of the key modern challenges, and we can't wait to continue accelerating this integration with future technology - giving governments and organisations greater control and observability of their defence and security."

In the past, governments and defence organisations have suffered from incumbent decision-making systems that are reliant on human actors and subject to bias and heuristics that can have an overly strong influence on emotive decisions. By combining scalable computer power and advanced artificial intelligence, the Forge will address strategic issues, capability gaps and optimisation of processes and logistics. From both a top-down perspective, looking at high level at policy and wider architectures, through to bottom-up looking at incremental innovation, the project aims to improve decision making with a holistic view of current and emerging systems. It will increase both the speed and agility of the decision cycle, maximising preparedness and reducing risk across operations.

Alan Roan, Managing Director of Cervus commented, “Forge can enable rapidly repeatable experimentation which, with a 'fail fast, fail early' approach, allows users to run ever-refined iterations on the issues that really matter to get to the crux of an issue. We use objectively derived data, pulled from cutting-edge simulation and analysed with our patented Data Engineering and Data Science systems to provide robust evidence for improved decision outcomes.”