Skyral delivers revolutionary social modelling technology to UK MOD

The announcement concludes the Analysing and Understanding Audiences contract, won by Skyral in October 2023, to help UK Defence develop a £275,000 proof-of-concept capability that enhances analysis and offers greater understanding of target audiences.

The technology is intended to aid mission planning, empowering the UK Armed Forces to make more informed decisions about audiences of interest.

Naomi Hulme, Managing Director of Skyral Government said:

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) will use Skyral’s Social Modelling Framework to gather and interpret complex data from a range of relevant operational audiences. Built alongside technical and scientific experts from Dstl, this game changing technology empowers military personnel by helping them select, analyse and understand audiences of interest.

The greater understanding of general population sentiment helps determine how people might move, react and plan before, during, and after a conflict. Having this understanding enhances situational awareness and operational planning, giving a new edge when it comes to battlefield readiness.

The proof-of-concept tooling developed by Skyral for DASA resolves challenges around lengthy data collection timelines, uncertainty, and the already complicated procedures associated with operational planning. The technology eases the challenges by synthesising information about target audiences, leveraging partial, sparse or aggregated data, as well as data collected from adjacent audiences. This means personnel get a highly focussed audience analysis capability, even when typical analysis is not feasible or convenient.

This is not the first piece of technology Skyral has successfully delivered for DASA. In December 2023 Skyral was awarded a £275,700 contract to develop models able to simulate synthetic populations and their dynamics in virtual environments.

These models will help personnel learn to fight in ways that are more credible, meaningful and representative of the human terrain in an operational theatre.

• To deliver the Social Modelling Framework, Skyral has partnered with Premise Data, whose global contributor network enables real-time and real-world insights, enabled the collection of a foundational and regionally focussed dataset from which to extrapolate out to wider audiences. This source provides not only a robust and scalable feed but also one that is verified with rigorous quality controls.