Detecting, tracking, and combating drones is an important public safety task. Especially in urban areas with their impressive skylines, tall buildings obstruct the observer's line of sight to the drone and make it difficult to detect it. Due to this special environment, SCALA tracks the detection and tracking of drones as well as their fight against them through a widely distributed network of multimodal sensors and actuators. The particular innovation is to examine the extent to which existing infrastructure can be included in the urban defense process.

The main objectives of SCALA are:

• the research and development of an optimized technology to counter the threat situation by drones in urban areas by using a large-scale distributed multi-modal sensor network, considering existing available urban infrastructure,
• an evaluation of the technology based on officially relevant urban scenarios and
• recommendations for the regulatory authority.

The project wants to achieve an investigation and a development of novel methods for effectively disrupting radio communication of a drone in urban and densely built-up areas, taking into account the surrounding conditions. This includes

• the analysis of the integration of the existing communications technology infrastructure into the intervention measures and
• the development of a distributed intervention system with a central control option to cover a wide variety of development scenarios using machine learning (ML) algorithms to increase the interference effectiveness and reduce the impairment on the surrounding environment.

Start: 01.10.2010

Ende: 30.09.2022

Webpage: https://www.kiras.at/en/financed-proposals/detail/d/scala-security-in-urban-areas/

Funding: FFG Kiras

Partners:

• AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
• JOANNEUM RESEARCH (JR)
• A1 Telekom Austria (A1)
• INRAS (INR)
• Austria Institut für Europa- und Sicherheitspolitik (AIES)
• Bundesministerium für Landesverteidigung (BMLV)
• Bundesministerium für Inneres (BMI)
• Bundesministerium für Justiz (BMJ)
• Bundesministerium für Klimaschutz, Umwelt, Energie, Mobilität, Innovation und Technologie (BMK)