PADR programme under grant agreement No 800893.

EU
 
Predictive methodologY for TecHnology Intelligence Analysis is a coordination and support action that has received funding from the European Union's Preparatory Action for Defence Research




 

Predictive methodologY for TecHnology Intelligence Analysis) is a coordination and support action that has received funding from the European Union's Preparatory Action for Defence Research - PADR programme under grant agreement No 800893.
Objective of the project is to develop an innovative methodology for performing strategic technology foresight in the defence domain.
The PYTHIA project is based upon three main challenges:
It is difficult to perform technology foresight, since it is extremely hard to retrieve all the traces left by R&D development, from which detecting the trends that make future technology foresight possible;
It is difficult to establish the correctness of a forecast if numbers are not used for evaluating the forecasters' opinions and if the success of those forecasters is not assessed by using numbers;
It is difficult to escape from the cognitive biases which limits the forecasters, also in case of well-prepared expert, to elaborate rational answers.
 

News

Project Management

Includes the activities for effectively planning, managing, and controlling the project throughout its duration, managing the consortium, reporting the project results and status. This also includes the setting up and implementation of the quality control system aimed at planning, managing, and assuring the quality of project deliverables and the activities for controlling data usage during the project.

The human factor in foresight

Aims at reviewing methods for assessing the correctness of predictions, analysing the most notable failures and success in technology forecasting in order to define a set of recommendations for European and non- European forecasters to mitigate the negative impact of the human factor.

The PYTHIA technological approach

Main objective is to provide a system with simple and intuitive technology forecasting services exploiting Big Data Analytics and text mining techniques. This system will be part of a collective intelligence environment to be used by experts and forecasters for discovering key technology trends.

Evaluation and assessment for Defence and Security research

Aims to present the concept of military/defence strategy in its various layers and dimensions, the main threats and risks that currently undermine EU security and stability, the strategic interests of the EU as well as of individual Member States, in order to evaluate the impact of future technologies on them and to propose defence research themes in response.

Creation and management of a network of foresight professionals and stakeholders

Is intended to foster the creation of a network of European technology foresight professionals and stakeholders with the aim to facilitate dialogue, collaboration, and the sharing of experience with Ministries of Defence from EDA-associated countries. Four workshops will be organised in order to collect input for the building of the PYTHIA methodology, to share the results of the work with the domain experts and with the international research community, and to gain a better understanding of the defence implications of technology changes.

Dissemination and exploitation

Manages the dissemination of the project activities through all the communication means that will be set up during the project and investigates about the opportunity to exploit PYTHIA's results.

The Consortium

Coordinator: Engineering - Italy
Engineering is the leading Italian software and services group, with 9,000 employees and 50 sites distributed in Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Republic of Serbia, South America (Brazil and Argentina) and United States, a consolidated revenue portfolio in 2016 of about 934.6 million Euros.
Engineering has a consolidated presence on all vertical markets and operates through its 4 business units - Public Administration & Healthcare, Telco & Utilities, Industry & Services, Finance - supported by cross-business unit centres of competence and by the Research and Innovation Department which, with its 250 resources, has the dual role of promoting research on software at an international level and transferring innovation to the production cycle of the business structures.
The Group operates in the outsourcing and cloud computing market via an integrated network of 4 data centres located in Pont-Saint-Martin (AO), Turin, Vicenza and Milan, equipped with infrastructure aligned to the best technological, quality and security standards.
The Group invests about 30 million Euro/year in research, with about 250 researchers, more than 70 ongoing national and international research projects and 4 development laboratories. Engineering is core partner of EIT Digital (Trento node of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology), co-founder of the Big Data Value cPPP, co-founder of the European initiative Future Internet PPP, partner of the Alliance for the Internet of Things (AIOTI PPP), board member of the European Organisation for Security EOS, partnership board member of the European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO), and co-founder of the initiative NESSI (Networked European Software and Service Initiative).
Role in the project
ENG will have a twofold role in the project. From one side ENG will coordinate all the activities of management of the project taking into account all the available assets, variables, costs, communication performance, risks and quality levels to allow all the participants to collaborate into the best conditions during co-located and remote working sessions. The company will hold the duty to interact with EDA to provide progress reports and relevant information during the evolution of the project. From the technical point of view the company will play a crucial role in terms of:
Development of a component to automatically generate scenarios based on the technological trends discovery Improvement of a smart visualization tool to create cockpits that will represent the trends and the on- demand forecasts that can be generated, by experts users that use the system according to guided wizards and by informal and unknown experts that can participate to challenges to support or disconfirm experts theories Integration of the services and tools developed and evolved during the project, regardless if they are ENG's existing assets or partners' ones.
Scientific and technical coordinator: Zanasi & Partners, Italy

Founded in 2006, Zanasi Alessandro Srl ("Zanasi & Partners") is a research and advisory company, incorporated in Italy and active internationally.
It serves its clients by focusing on strategic decision-making related to unconventional threats (e.g. terrorism, cyber-threats, climate change, etc.), applying and developing innovative forecasting and strategic intelligence methodologies as well as new approaches to mitigate the cognitive biases that have contributed to recent intelligence failures.
Z&P has received funding from the European Commission for 20 security and defence research projects. As an advisory company, Z&P's clients include European Commission DGs and international institutions (e.g. ESA, FRONTEX, ENISA, etc.), national governments (e.g. Italy, Saudi Arabia, Romania, Algeria, etc.) and large private organisations (e.g. Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, Siemens AG, etc.).

Role in the project
Zanasi & Partners will cover the role of PYTHIA Scientific and Technical Coordinator. Its specific project activities will focus on the following aspects:

 

  • Application of big data analytics techniques to relevant information sources in order to automatically detect technology trends and produce scenarios;
  • Analysis and mitigation of analysts' psychological pitfalls in order to improve their forecasting capabilities;
  • Facilitation of international workshops aiming to test the findings of PYTHIA against the best practitioners at European and global level.

Z&P
Expert System France - France

Expert System (ES) is a technology company developing big text/data analytics solutions, including a Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine and a complete semantic network for performing advanced text analytics tasks, development and management of taxonomies and ontologies, automatic categorization and information extraction. Over the last thirty years, ES has developed a unique expertise in the application of this proprietary knowhow to the analysis of documents regarding technology (e.g. patents, scientific articles, conference proceedings, etc.) in order to extract trends and perform automatic foresight.
The expertise of ES includes the management of most common standards for importing and mapping available customer ontologies in order to facilitate interoperability (transfer and normalization tasks). The PYTHIA project, through semantic personalization, can exploit a large amount of provided information for performing deeper-level analyses and fine-tuning the entities/relations extraction for the best quality.
Founded in 1989, ES currently has a permanent staff composed of 115 professionals. In 2015, ES acquired TEMIS SA and established ES France as the company's French branch.

 
Role in the project
in the PYTHIA project, ES will manage the data collection and data analysis process. As the first step in Technology Foresight, a retrospective analysis is needed in order to understand the dynamics behind an emerging technology. Those analyses require important skills in the fields of scientometric tools and technology watch methodologies. This is absolutely necessary to monitor scientific publications but also large patent databases. Thus, ES will as main tasks monitor the data collection process and manage the selection of tools and software to analyse scientific and patent literature.

ESF
Hawk Associates Ltd - United Kingdom

Hawk is an open source intelligence and technology specialist offering strategic, operational and technical support to organisations within the Defence and Security sectors. The company is dedicated to providing on-going intelligence-led services including market analysis and forecasting, technology roadmapping, technology and risk intelligence, early-warning and foresight, training and strategic consultancy. Using OSINT, domain expertise and a proven analytical capability, the company enables organisations to address their most critical challenges and gain the insight and capabilities they need to exploit information effectively and make better decisions. Hawk has many years of experience in the fields of technology scouting, technology observatory/monitoring and technology intelligence. Special focus is placed on improving intelligence tradecraft and developing adaptive methodologies for future-based and predictive work. Technology foresight, impact and evaluation as well as risk and opportunity assessments are key to Hawk's analytical capability. The company has worked with a multitude of Ministries of Defence as well as private sector clients. Hawk is a member of ADS in the UK and is ISO 9001:2008 registered for Information Management.

 
Role in the project
Hawk will use its expertise to support activities within WP2, WP3, WP4 and WP5. Further support will be given to elements within WP1 (security management) and WP6 (dissemination and exploitation). This will draw on Hawk's experience in developing, evaluating and delivering methods for measuring prediction accuracy and improving the accuracy of technology foresight based on real end-user forecasting needs and the best strategies to adopt to achieve this (WP2). As an OSINT and IM specialist, Hawk will support the tasks in WP3 for the identification of relevant information sources and the tools to manage these. Based on this work, tasks in WP4 will focus on strategies for the defence sector, development of scenarios and opportunities for strategic technology foresight and the links to other research programmes and new technologies and themes for research.

Hawk Associates Limited
Military University of Technology - Poland

Military University of Technology is a public technical university under Ministry of Science and Higher Education as well as Ministry of Defense. The entire university is divided into seven technical faculties. Institute of Optoelectronics (IOE) is the research institute with faculty status within the Military University of Technology. IOE activities are mainly focused on basic and applied research in the fields of optoelectronics and photonic technologies. The principal mission of the IOE is research and development related to defense and security needs defined by the Ministry of Defense (MoD). IOE activities include a wide range of undertakings, ranging from basic scientific investigations, development of laboratory models and technology demonstrators, to testing prototypes. The remarkable professional competence and experience of the staff at t enables an interdisciplinary approach towards research tasks and development projects. The institute undertakes scientific research in the field of laser physics, photonics, optics, optoelectronics, security systems, spectroscopy, thermovision, biometrics, signal detection and the interaction of laser radiation with matter.
The background has been strengthen during numerous scientific programs managed by the EU, EDA, and NATO. For many years the Institute is involved in various scientific initiatives worldwide, in the framework of bilateral collaboration agreements.
The research work of IOE has been always accompanied by the activities in the field of education. Over recent years, the laboratory infrastructure of the IOE has seen considerable development as a result of successive investments and realizations of several projects and programs.

Role in the project
the main roles of WAT will focus on providing technical defense and security oriented expertise, gathering and providing guidelines for the forecasting methodology, co-organizing workshops and engaging its network of Stakeholders for the project activities.
Fondazione ICSA (Intelligence Culture And Strategic Analysis) (ICSA)

FONDAZIONE ICSA is a non-governmental body, a centre of analysis and of cultural processing that deals in innovative ways with security, defence and intelligence issues.
Its mission is to analyse the main aspects of national and foreign security issues, the evolution of military defence models with respect to external threats and the increasing criminal and illegal phenomena in Italy and abroad. In addition, it observes the growing role of cyber and technological security of the State and its individual citizens.
The President of the Foundation is General Leonardo Tricarico, former Italian Air Force Chief of Staff.
The Scientific Committee is composed of academic and professional personalities with outstanding expertise in matters of defence, security and intelligence and constitutes an essential organ of the Foundation.

Role in the project
The main role of ICSA in the PYTHIA project will be played within the context of WP4, where ICSA will leverage its expertise on national security issues for leading the identification and assessment of relevant threats and risks to EU security. As part of WP4, ICSA will also contribute to the evaluation of the concept of defence strategy and of EU/national interests as well as to the identification of potentially disruptive future technologies for European defence. In addition to WP4, ICSA will be involved in some of the end-user workshops foreseen under WP5 and will participate to the consortium's efforts to disseminate project results across the European security and defence community.

ICSA
Romanian National Defense University, Carol I° (NDU)

It is the highest military education institution within Romanian Ministry of Defense and consequently it has a major role in the transformation processes of the national defense forces in accordance with the new global security environment and Romania's NATO and EU member status.
NDU expresses its readiness to actively participate in projects competitions under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme and other international projects competitions by providing its scientific expertise and available infrastructure in areas such as: national defense, security, intelligence, crisis management and conflict prevention, multinational and joint operations, stability, support transition and reconstruction operations, prevention and fighting against terrorism, defense resource management, modeling and simulation, leadership, military art and science, learning, education and training.
NDU missions are oriented towards two main goals:

  • Education and training of military and civilian leaders and experts in the field of national defense, information and security.
  • Conducting of scientific studies requested by high-level organizations with responsibilities in the field of national defense and security (Presidency, Government, Supreme Council for National Defense, Parliament, etc.).
Role in the project
Based on its expertise NDU is responsible to:
  • perform a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the current operational environment, identifying main trends in technological development and their associated impact on security and defense sectors;
  • identify user requirements, learning and training needs;
  • contribute to the design of PYTHIA conceptual model and methodology;
  • identify and select functional, non-functional and technical requirements and specifications for the PYTHIA deliverable;
  • develop specific scenarios, organize workshops and contribute to the testing and validation process
contribute to the dissemination and exploitation of PYTHIA scientific results and practical deliverables
Carol I National Defense University
Bulgarian Defence Institute "Professor Tsvetan Lazarov" - Bulgaria

Bulgarian Defence Institute "Professor Tsvetan Lazarov" is the main scientific-research, testing-design and expert-technical structure in the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria.
Bulgarian Defence Institutes' work is focused to:

  • Scientific-research activities, scientific-practical activities, development and experimental design activities in the sphere of Armaments, C4I Systems, Military Techniques, Logistic Equipment and Materials
  • Support to the Analysis of the situation of the Armaments, C4I Systems, and Military Techniques, Logistic Equipment and materials and working out of perspective prognoses on their development.
  • Support to the Integrated Project Teams through taking part in the preparation, scientific monitoring and complete implementation of the defence programs and projects.
  • Reproduction of scientific personnel through education in doctoral programs, their development and creation of scientific-technical for needs of the Defence System.
  • Support and ensure of scientific-technical consultations by experts for the needs of the Armaments Council and the Defence Capabilities Council.
  • Cooperation in the sphere of research works, development, testing and certification of the defence products in the frameworks of NATO, The European Union, as well as on bilateral basis and in national aspect.
  • Working out technical specifications and expertise, programs and methods for testing, as well as standardization and other documents, related with the acquisition of defence products.
  • Preparation and performance of laboratory, functional, acquisition, field and other testing of armaments, C4I systems, Military techniques, Logistic equipment and materials.
  • Treasure, acquisition and development of the departmental standards.
  • Certification of Quality Management Systems in accordance with NATO Standards, guaranteeing of the quality and assessment of the compliance during the acquisition of defence products.
  • Ensuring of air safety and flying suitability of the military aerial vehicles, as well as of the aerial vehicles of the Ministry of the Interior.
 
Role in the project
in PYTHIA, BDI will share expertise in the horizon scanning, tech watch development, and foresight analysis security including technical and operational aspects. BDI will be involved in the following main tasks in the project: security aspects management, the human factor in technology foresight: source of failures and successes, review of the current methodologies for defence and security technology forecasting, identification and evaluation of relevant information sources, big data and text mining techniques for technology trends discovery, smart visual analytics for the situational picture: automatic generation of scenarios, creation and management of a network of end-users, and dissemination and exploitation of the results. Additionally will disseminate the results through internal channels into the Bulgarian MoD and Bulgarian Armed Forces, and into external channels to European Defence Agency.
National Defense University "Carol I" - Romania

Romanian National Defense University "Carol I" (NDU) is the highest military education institution within the Romanian Ministry of Defense and consequently it has a major role in the transformation processes of the national defense forces in accordance with the new global security environment and Romania's NATO and EU member status. NDU expresses its readiness to actively participate in projects competitions under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme and other international projects competitions by providing its scientific expertise and available infra- structure in areas such as: national defense, security, intelligence, crisis management and conflict prevention, multinational and joint operations, stability, support transition and reconstruction operations, prevention and fighting against terrorism, defense resource management, modeling and simulation, leadership, military art and science, learning, education and training. NDU missions are oriented towards two main goals:


Thus, NDU is engaged in a prodigious activity of fundamental and applied scientific research in the areas of security and defense, strategy, operational art and tactics, by participating as project leader or partner in national and international research programs, and as evaluator for national and international projects, including FP7 and H2020. Also, NDU experts are invited to participate in top conferences, courses, NATO workshops (ADL Experts Group at NATO Training Group for Individual Training and Education Development; NATO ADL Mobile Expert Team) and committees (Scientific Advisory Committee of US Office of Naval Research Global). Under the coordination of Centre for Defense and Security Strategic Studies (CDSSS), the main center for strategic studies within the Ministry of National Defense, NDU's students, teachers and research staff are involved in various scientific research programs. The scientific research within CDSSS is divided in four programs (Concepts and Theories, European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, Areas of Strategic Interest, and Armed Forces and Society), supplemented by participation in national and international research projects on topics such as: security technology, critical infrastructures, crisis management, extreme risk events, human security, etc.

Role in the project
Based on its expertise NDU is responsible to:

 


Carol I National Defense University
Fondazione ICSA (Intelligence Culture and Strategic Analysis) - Italy

Fondazione ICSA is a non-governmental body, a centre of analysis and of cultural processing that deals in innovative ways with security, defence and intelligence issues.
Its mission is to analyse the main aspects of national and foreign security issues, the evolution of military defence models with respect to external threats and the increasing criminal and illegal phenomena in Italy and abroad. In addition, it observes the growing role of cyber and technological security of the State and its individual citizens.
The President of the Foundation is General Leonardo Tricarico, former Italian Air Force Chief of Staff. The Scientific Committee is composed of academic and professional personalities with outstanding expertise in matters of defence, security and intelligence and constitutes an essential organ of the Foundation.

Role in the project
The main role of ICSA in the PYTHIA project will be played within the context of WP4, where ICSA will leverage its expertise on national security issues for leading the identification and assessment of relevant threats and risks to EU security. As part of WP4, ICSA will also contribute to the evaluation of the concept of defence strategy and of EU/national interests as well as to the identification of potentially disruptive future technologies for European de- fence. In addition to WP4, ICSA will be involved in some of the end-user workshops foreseen under WP5 and will participate to the consortium's efforts to disseminate project results across the European security and defence community.

Publications

No publications

Pythia

Collective Intelligence

Stakeholders

Name Organisation Country Role
Anu ESLAS
Estonian Defence Industry Association
Estonia
Head of International Relations & Export
Geert DE CUBER
Belgian Ministry of Defence
Belgium
Researcher
Giovanni NACCI
Intelli|Sfèra
Italy
President
Jaume REINOSO
Reinoso Consultors
Spain
Founder and General Manager
Julian RICHARDS
University of Buckingham,Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS)
England
Founder
Luca SALAMONE
Italian Ministry of Defence, 5th Department of the National Armaments Directorate
Italy
Deputy Director for "Technological Innovation" of the Secretariat General of Defence and National Armaments Direction
Mario LIOTTA
Italian Ministry of Defence
Italy
Analyst
Panagiotis TZORTZIS
Hellenic Ministry of National Defence
Greece
Head of the Research and Development Section
Rainer MICHAELI
Institute for Competitive Intelligence (ICI)
Germany
Founder and Director
Alexandru ANDREI
Armaments Department
Romania
Officer
Roman RAZVAN
Protection And Guard Service
Romania
Officer (IT specialist)
Petre LUCA
Ministry Of Defence
Romania
Officer (analyst)
Dumitru GEORGESCU
Ministry Of Defence
Romania
Officer (analyst)
Romica BURCUS
Ministry Of Defence
Romania
Command and staff officer
Dan PETRESCU
Ministry Of Defence
Romania
Command and staff officer
Costel FRINCU
Ministry Of Defence
Romania
Command and staff officer
Daniel SUDITU
Ministry Of Defence
Romania
Command and staff officer
Cristian POPOVICI
Ministry Of Defence
Romania
Command and staff officer
Name Organisation Country Role
Stefano PALMINTERI
Ecole Normale Supérieure Département d'Études Cognitives
France
Research Director at the Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives
Thanos DOKOS
Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP)
Greece
General Director
Eugen POROJAN
Security Analysis and Studies Centre (CASS)
Romania
Executive Secretary
Umberto GORI
Università degli Studi di Firenze, Center of Strategic, International and Entrepreneurial Studies (CSSII)
Italy
President
Giampiero GIACOMELLO
University of Bologna, Department of Social and Political Sciences (DSPS)
Italy
Associate Professor of Political Science
Iulian CHIFU
Center for conflict prevention and early warning
Romania
President
Narciz BALASOIU
Center for conflict prevention and early warning
Romania
Executive director
Ion BALACEANU
Centre for analysis and security studies
Romania
Expert
Eugen POROJAN
Centre for analysis and security studies
Romania
Expert
Eugen Valeriu POPA
Strategikon
Romania
Vicepresident
Name Organisation Country Role
Massimo CAPPELLI
Global Cyber Security Center (GCSEC)
Italy
Planning Operations Manager
Luc QUONIAM
I3M, University de Toulon
France
Professor
Michel DURAMPART
I3M laboratory, University de Toulon
France
Director
Morten LEHN
Kaspersky Lab Italia srl
Italy
Cyber-security expert
Stefano MELE
Moire Consulting Group
Italy
Founder and President
Marcela SAPAKOVA
New Space Technologies s.r.o.
Czech Republic
Programme Manager
Mario-Ioan PISO
Romanian Space Agency (ROSA)
Romania
President
Alan PORTER
Search Technology Inc.
USA
R&D Director
Martin AGÜERA
Airbus Defence and Space SAS
France
Head of Media Relations
Aurélie NEGRO
Bull
France
Press relation
Patrick CAPPE DE BAILLON
CEA
France
Head of press office
Piotr PILAROWSKI
Department of Innovation and Technology Development, Polish Armament Group
Poland
Expert
Antoni KURZEJA
Research and Development Centre for Mechanical Appliances OBRUM
Poland
R&D Director
Przemysław
Research and Development
Poland
System
OSTROWSKI
Centre for Mechanical Appliances OBRUM
Poland
Designer/Analyst
Zeljko TEKIC
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow
Russia
Professor
Denis CAVALLUCCI
CSIP/ICUBE/INSA Strasbourg
France
Professor
Paweł FLEISCHER
Institute for Forecasting and International Studies
Poland
President and CEO
Martin G. MOEHRLE
Institute of Project Management and Innovation, Bremen
Germany
Head of Institute
Wojciech KOŹMIC
Polish Armament Group
Poland
Manager of Strategy Office
Gaetano CASCINI
Polytechnic University of Milan
Italy
Professor
Ernesto CILLERUELO
University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
Spain
Professor
PYTHIA (Predictive methodologY for TecHnology Intelligence Analysis) has received funding from the European Union's Preparatory Action on Defence Research under grant agreement No 800893.
The information contained in this document reflects only the author's view and the European Defence Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains