Logo of the Ministry of Defence featuring a crown, anchor, and sword symbols in white on a black background with the text 'Ministry of Defence' below.

FUTURE OF MODELLING & SIMULATION

The word 'HACK MASTERS' written in large, three-dimensional, bronze-colored letters.
Logo of Dasobu Oxford Brookes University

“The quality of prototypes and thinking produced in just two days was exceptional and it has been a pleasure to judge such a broad range of ideas.”

— Bijal Mistry, Head of the Defence Modelling & Simulation Office

MOD: MODELLING & SIMULATION HACKATHON

THE CHALLENGE

The Defence Modelling and Simulation Office (DMSO) holds a repository containing 3D Models (e.g. tanks, buildings, people, munitions), terrains and software for re-use across Defence.

DMSO is creating an online catalogue of all the assets. To enable publication of an online catalogue of the assets held, the metadata of these assets needs to be collated into a specific template which can be uploaded by the catalogue supplier.

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THE APPROACH

Defence and Security research centre at Oxford Brookes University (DASOBU) in collaboration with Hackmasters worked closely with the DMSO to refine the problem definition, define the Hacker Briefs and provide the platform and subject matter experts to facilitate the delivery of the Hackathon.

This collaboration collaboration provides a scalable platform to deliver future MOD Hackathons across multiple challenges, accelerating practical solutions from concept to impact.

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Four people sitting at a conference table with paper notes, a laptop, and water bottles, engaging in discussion in a room with a whiteboard and a projector.
A man in military camouflage speaking to a woman with curly hair at a table, in a room with a digital clock showing 11:55 on the wall.
A person in military camouflage uniform sitting inside a cockpit with two digital screens, one displaying a radar and the other a map, controlling with a joystick.
A person wearing glasses and a pilot's helmet sitting inside a vintage military aircraft cockpit, with flags hanging in the background.
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  • The Extraction & Management of the Metadata

    How can the extraction of metadata from digital files be automated to optimise ease of file management, efficiency of finding/organising files and loading the assets into the online catalogue?

  • The Prioritisation of Effort

    In order to establish a catalogue MVP (minimal viable product); how can we identify the most valuable and useful files/assets in order to prioritise their upload?

  • The Validation of Supplier Assets

    How can supplier assets be validated to ensure the submission of complete data so that the files can be used?

THE IMPACT

Military personnel, civil servants, industry professionals & experts, and university experts.

All joined together under the banner of bringing about positive change through innovation.

“The energy, creativity, and collaboration from both the students and industry participants really stood out, their enthusiasm helped maintain momentum and contributed significantly to the quality of the ideas produced.

This is certainly in no small part due to how your team ran the event.”

— Pete Scott, Technical Authority Support Team Officer at DMSO

People working at a long conference table with laptops and papers.

3 SOLUTIONS

HACKERS DEVELOPED INNOVATIVE AND FUNCTIONAL PROTOTYPES THAT TACKLED UNIQUE ANGLES OF THE CHALLENGE

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Over two days at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham, three teams competed to find innovative solutions to improve how DMSO verifies, exploits and disseminates its data sets - with the winning team creating a web app to validate digital assets, improving the speed and range of services available across Defence.