Command and Control

What we do

Command and control

We collaborate with agencies and stakeholders to enable shared intelligence, situational awareness and informed decision-making, enhancing interoperability to address specific security scenarios in public and private sectors.

Command and control

What’s new?

Situational awareness at a glance

The Cmore web-based platform incorporates information from multiple sources into a consolidated view that provides operational response managers with near real-time tactical situational awareness. Data from various sensor systems, including optical, audio, radar and biometric, are collected to create smart situational awareness systems for safety and security applications. Cmore has proven its value in managing safety at large sporting events and concerts, disaster response, public order policing, counter-poaching and logistics management. The platform is available through license agreements.

Operational command centre for asset and fleet management

The operational command centre for asset and fleet management was developed for the Logistics Division of the South African National Defence Force to manage its fleets and other assets and to improve operational efficiency and staff safety. It provides live tracking and status updates of vehicles and assets; relays notifications of driver behaviour anomalies; analyses fuel consumption patterns; reports on vehicle maintenance trends, geofence and speed transgressions; as well as visualises vehicle routes and route planning information to support logistics and operational planning.

Assisting authorities with disaster management

The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs approached the CSIR for a disaster management communication solution to improve situational awareness. Given the prevalence of natural disasters, such as flooding, fires and adverse weather, provincial authorities require a system to enable faster response times, especially in remote rural areas. The Cmore situational awareness platform was selected and adapted to meet disaster management operational requirements.

Our Research

Situational awareness and decision support

The CSIR has developed interoperable software system applications and tools for civil and military use. These solutions provide shared situational awareness and improve operational efficiency and decision-making. They form the backbone of command centres supporting large national events (such as sports and music festivals), cyber incident tracking and pandemic response.

Integrated capability management

Drawing on our expertise in systems-of-systems engineering, we support multi-agency operational effectiveness, enterprise architecture design, interoperability and data model development to facilitate and enable joint, interdepartmental and multi-agency operations.

Physical and logical security

We start by building an understanding of a security problem – the threat, modus operandi and enterprise vulnerabilities – before we assist in developing security operational concepts for threat mitigation, the design of security capabilities and evaluating security effectiveness. These services have been successfully applied to reducing wildlife crime and critical infrastructure protection.

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Our facilities

Concept development and evaluation centre

We use a concept demonstration and experimentation centre to test capabilities, develop solutions and establish control centres for agencies involved in national safety and security. This lab-like facility recreates a single operations environment, where various configurations of software and hardware can be easily and quickly prepared to demonstrate different operational scenarios, such as disaster management, large public gatherings or surveillance of large areas involving multiple role players.

Command and Control

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