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E2DS '11

Conference Program


DAY ONE, Tuesday 3 May

07.30-08.20: Registration

08.20: Welcome and Introduction

SESSION ONE – Setting the Scene: Climate Change, the Security Dimension and the Rationale for Aerospace, Defense and Security Sector Engagement

Whilst there is now a broad global consensus that climate change is a reality – one we are going to have to live with, adapt to or mitigate in the years, decades and centuries ahead - many of its causes and effects remain uncertain; and uncertainty is a breeding ground for insecurity and instability. During this opening session delegates will gain insights from leading experts on the underpinning science of climate change and what the data is telling us about man’s energy, environment and climate future. Delegates will also learn the backdrop to the aerospace, defense and security industry’s involvement in energy and environmental markets and how these twin fields – irrevocably linked to climate change – represent new strategic horizons for engagement by the sector.

08.30-10.00

Refreshment Break

SESSION TWO – Government and Aerospace, Defense and Security Sector Collaboration in Meeting Energy, Environment and Counter-Climate Change Challenges

During this second session, delegates will gain key information on the Obama administration’s stand on energy, environment and climate change policy and how these domains link to security. Technology, solutions to pressing international challenges and the role that engagement in these areas can provide in stimulating innovation across all industrial sectors will form the backdrop to the speeches and discussions that follow. The panel represents the entire western hemisphere Chief Technology Officer (CTO) community at aerospace, defense and security prime contractor level – the first time they have ever gathered in a public forum to discuss these issues. The session will charter the industry’s evolution from ‘platform builders’ to ‘global solutions providers’ over the past two decades and how energy and environmental issues are affecting their future plans.

10.30-11.00

Keynote address

11.00-12.30

Panel Discussion: ‘The Unique Ability of the Aerospace, Defense and Security Sector to Provide Key Environmental, Climate and Sustainable Energy Solutions’

Moderator:

Panelists:

Topics to be covered during Panel Discussion:

Lunch

SESSION THREE – Gathering Environmental and Climate Change Data and the Unique Capabilities of the Aerospace, Defense and Security Industry

The purpose of this session is to examine the important role of environmental information – who needs it, who’s providing it and how to ensure it will be there in the future.

14.00-15.15

Panel Discussion: ‘Managing Risk: The Critical Role of Environmental Information’ - Organized by the Alliance for Earth Observations

Moderator:

Panelists:

Topics to be covered during Panel Discussion:

Refreshment Break

SESSION FOUR – Addressing Global Environmental Needs at a System-of-Systems Level – The Aerospace, Defense and Security Industry’s Biggest Potential Contribution to Solving Climate Change Challenges?

By the very nature of their products and the domains in which they operate – from space to sub-sea - aerospace, defense and security companies have long possessed an understanding of the environment and its challenges. They are also designing technologies – as previous and ensuing sessions demonstrate - with unique applications to new energy and environmental markets. But is this the sector’s greatest potential contribution to helping address the complex problems thrown up by climate change? Earth’s climate and its eco-systems are infinitely complicated, interrelated ‘systems-of-systems’, each system having a knock-on effect on others. The aerospace, defense and security industry has decades-old experience in understanding and designing vast and intricate architectures underpinned by system-of-systems engineering disciplines, latterly augmented by ‘network-centric’ IT skills. In the next session, delegates will learn how these skills are being applied – now and in the future – to environmental and climate challenges.

15.45-17.30

EVENING RECEPTION



DAY TWO, Wednesday 4th May

08.00-08.50: Registration

08.50: Welcome and Introduction

SESSION ONE – Military Requirements as a Stimulus to New Thinking, New Technology Development and ‘Out-of-the-Box’ Solutions to New Energy Needs – The US Navy/Marine Corps Dimension

In the opening session on Day 2, delegates will gain a unique insight into military thinking and planning for a new energy future. Energy is a tactical and strategic resource that has to be protected at all costs. It is fundamentally linked to national and international security needs. Concerns over supply and demand for traditional sources of energy have led the US military in particular to embark on a bold and ambitious campaign to wean its forces off traditional fossil fuels and onto renewable and alternative sources of energy. Given the unique demands of the military – and the innovation required to meet energy needs, often in austere and hostile environments – what do we know, and what do we still need to know about the military’s energy requirements? And how much of what the military requires – and is producing solutions for – is transferrable to the wider commercial marketplace? In this session and the panel discussion that follows, delegates will gain insights from service and government decision-makers on current US activities and their plans for the future.

09.00-11.00

Keynote address

Panel Discussion: ‘Can the Military Act as a Driver of Innovation in the Wider World of Commercial Renewable and Alternative Energy Generation?’

Moderator:

Panelists:

Refreshment Break

SESSION TWO – Government, Commercial and Defense Sector Collaboration: Spurring Innovation in the Drive for Renewable Energy Technologies

In his State of the Union address on 25th January 2011, President Obama said that America needed to ‘out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world’ in new research and technology endeavors – and especially in clean energy technology. This movement – which will need to reach “a level of R&D not seen since the height of the space race” – is designed, he added, to strengthen America’s security, protect the planet and create countless new jobs. In the following session, delegates will learn from industry and government experts – not just in America, but from Europe as well – how clean energy can provide a stimulus to investment, innovation and wealth-creation. It will set the stage for the session that follows in outlining the kinds of investments that governments are making in the renewable energy field and how the commercial sector and the defense sector can meet to match the growing expectations of governments and consumers in the energy arena.

11.30-13.00

Lunch

SESSION THREE – Defense Sector Technologies and Solutions and the Needs of the New Energy Society – How Municipal, National and Regional Infrastructure Requirements Can Be Met by the Aerospace, Defense and Security Sector

In the final session, aerospace and defense sector experts will outline the skill sets the sector has developed, and is continuing to develop, to meet the new energy and infrastructure requirements outlined in the previous session. Over the past 15 years, the AD&S industry has developed command and control and ‘net-centric’ technologies and solutions – originally to provide armed forces with real-time data and situational awareness – that are now highly applicable to managing the ‘flows’ – of electrons and information – that underpin the complex regimes in which utility companies operate. Many of these same skills, also underwritten by net-centric technologies and command and control solutions, are now being applied to the development of highly complex infrastructure needs – managing the matrix of energy, transportation, waste disposal, emission mitigation and security requirements that form the basis of emerging municipal, national and regional infrastructures.

14.00-15.30

Refreshment Break

16.00-17.00

17.00-17.15

Panel Discussion and Concluding Remarks
IHS