Airbus chairs Finnish Priority research program for innovation

Helsinki, 15th October 2019 – Airbus has announced its active participation in a Finnish governmental-funded pioneer research program called Priority, launched in August of this year. Over a two-year time frame, the program aims to find answers to various key research questions in the fields of 5G security, Artificial Intelligence (AI), rural area coverage, and quality of service in hybrid networks, improving critical communications and situational awareness for public safety users.

The program consortium, chaired by Airbus, is composed of around twenty key stakeholders from the Finnish public safety community; amongst them are research organisations, enterprises, user organisations, and a mobile operator.

 Airbus will focus research on enhanced critical communications services, network analytics, and machine learning in the field of public safety, with emphasis on Artifical Intelligence use. This includes automatic security assistance, crowd anomaly detection, and data analytics.

“The market is witnessing a major shift in public safety communications and operations due to technological evolution, as well as new environmental and criminal threats. In the future, artificial intelligence will be essential for our customers from public safety organisations, both to improve the efficiency of mission critical operations, and the safety and security of societies” explains Tapio Savunen, Strategic Marketing Director for Secure Land Communications at Airbus and chairman of the Priority program steering group.

“Public Safety users such as police, fire and rescue personnel have specific requirements, which grow beyond those of consumers or enterprises. These include high availability, reliability of services, and uncompromising security. At Airbus, our priority is to follow and anticipate technological trends to be ready to provide tailored solutions, perfectly adapted to our customers. Research programs like this one are powerful tools, which help to bundle resources and share know-how between key players in the public safety domain” Savunen adds.

Airbus

Airbus is a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. In 2018 it generated revenues of € 64 billion and employed a workforce of around 134,000. Airbus offers the most comprehensive range of passenger airliners. Airbus is also a European leader providing tanker, combat, transport and mission aircraft, as well as one of the world’s leading space companies. In helicopters, Airbus provides the most efficient civil and military rotorcraft solutions worldwide.

Secure Land Communications (www.securelandcommunications.com)

Secure Land Communications (SLC), an Airbus business unit, offers advanced communication and collaboration solutions to gather, process and deploy intelligence. Its portfolio is tailored to the needs of Public Safety, Defence and Transport, Utility and Industry (TUI). It includes infrastructures, devices, applications and services based on Tetra, Tetrapol and Broadband technologies (either single, hybrid or multi-technology solutions). As the European leader and a key international player, SLC has customers in more than 80 countries and employs around 1,150 people in 17 countries.

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