0830:
4 June - Opening Remarks by Bob Suart Director,
Canadian Centre for Mine Action Technologies (CCMAT)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Welcome
by Lloyd Axworthy
Opening Remarks by Bob Suart
Appendix
1 - Complete Presentations
Appendix
2 - Poster Presentations
Last night at the reception I welcomed everybody and looked forward
to a good workshop and a good session over the next two days.
I would like to reiterate that sentiment. I'm very pleased to see a
very good showing of people here who know what they're talking about, high
calibre people that guarantee our workshop will be a success.
I want to spend just a few minutes talking about what we hope to
accomplish at this workshop.
I think it's understood that this is not a conference. It is a
workshop and I want to make it as clear as I can what we hope to
accomplish.
Workshops presumably have a product
in mind and this is no exception.
We would certainly hope that after spending two days in close
proximity, working hard, that we will have an action plan.
When I talk about mine action in this context, we are really
talking about demining and the business of clearing land.
There has been a lot said about a gulf between the people using
equipment in the field and those involved in the developing of equipment,
who are said to live in a different world.
There is no doubt that there has been a tendency, over some period
of time, for technology which is required in mine action to be developed
in isolation, or at least, to some degree, in isolation from the people
that are required to apply that technology. This is a generalization and
I'm absolutely convinced it's not 100% true but there is an element of
truth to it. If there is an aim to this workshop, it is to bridge that
gulf. In
order to bridge the gulf, we are going to have to find a way to talk to
each other in constructive ways.
I've been to many conferences with respect to mine action and the
technology issues behind mine action and I've heard the very strongly felt
beliefs of people on both sides of the issues.
What I've also noticed is that nothing much changes.
I hear people declaring that the developers don't know what they're
doing and don't know what the deminers do in the field.
I also hear the developers complaining that there is no take up of
the product of their efforts.
If, in fact, these claims are true, then we have to change things.
We have to make some kind of an effort to move the yardsticks and
get on with it.
I don't think there's anybody in this group of very informed people
that would argue that the way things are in the minefields is just the way
they should be.
We have methods of demining. Generally speaking, the most wide
spread is manual demining which involves the use of probes, dogs and metal
detectors and some other things which may or may not be there.
I think we'd all agree that if we continue using manual demining
and we're still faced with 50 - 100 million mines, it's going to certainly
take longer than the time contemplated by the Ottawa Convention to get
those mines out of the ground and to return countries to normal economic
activity.
We do need better ways and these are being investigated.
We have organized this workshop around four sessions.
The first two are personal protective equipment and mechanical
assistance equipment.
Those two topics were chosen, not because they're the most
important technical areas or that there's some particular issue behind
them. In fact, detection technology occupies a greater part of the budget
and time associated with technical development. Those topics were chosen
because in these we have experience and have attempted to introduce
equipment into the field. The objections I made allusion seem to arise
most often in those two areas. We felt that, rather than try to cover the
whole technical spectrum, it would be best if we focused on a couple of
areas where most of us have some experience.
So we're going to talk about personal protective equipment and
mechanical assistance equipment in some detail. We will not try, in any
way, to suggest how to improve these things or to deal with the technical
issues, but rather to examine the process that we have gone through
historically in the development of these equipments and in the attempt to
introduce them into the field.
I think that there is something wrong with the process. We don't
have a very good market model in humanitarian demining.
We have donors who fund operations in the field and we have
developers who may fund themselves, often through government. We have
industrial participants who are trying make equipment and to introduce it
into the field and to sell it in a market that doesn’t provide very good
feedback from the point of view of the user and his requirements.
In order to improve the effectiveness of the introduction of
technology into the practice of humanitarian demining, we really have to
look at the process and not focus on some particular aspect of the
technology.
At this workshop, we can't expect to identify some technical
advance that will, once introduced, suddenly solve the problems of the
deminer.
His problems are more pervasive than that.
We need to find a way to systematize or organize the whole business
of development and procurement of equipment in the humanitarian demining
field. That is what I want and hope that we can focus on in this workshop.
I have, for many years worked in a laboratory which serves a
military client and many people here have the same experience.
In the military context, the whole business of identifying the need
for equipment, the process of development and testing equipment and the
process of procurement, distribution and life cycle management is
well-defined.
When I say well-defined, I don't necessarily mean that it is a
perfect process by any means. I would not suggest that we try to adopt
that process for humanitarian demining equipment procurement. It wouldn't
work because we don't have one central authority as you have in the
military that can lay down rules and regulations and define the process.
However, there is a process and it's understood in the military
context to have many elements starting with the definition of the needs
and requirements of the user. These requirements are made known to the
people that engage in the development of new technology and the
application of that technology to new equipment.
There is a process of development that normally goes through
several stages from proof of concept through the production of several
successively more sophisticated development
models, ultimately resulting in a prototype that can be tested.
Test and evaluation occurs at all phases of the development process
ultimately leading to test and evaluation for acceptance by the user.
For a couple of years, several nations have been working on an
International Test and Evaluation Program (ITEP) for humanitarian
demining.
We have reached the point where we have an internationally agreed
MOU, a whole lot of structure that has been suggested and agreed, but we
haven't done much testing and evaluation.
Furthermore, we haven't integrated the ITEP process into our
procurement methodology for humanitarian demining. This is something we
must do.
We must find a way to generate user requirements that are agreed
and sensible and apply these requirements when we undertake development of
equipment in laboratories and businesses or conduct test and evaluation.
Demining equipment will then go through the process of development and
testing with some reasonable expectation that it will function in the
field as it should.
We don't have very much on the ground yet to put this process into
operation. The third session of the workshop is therefore devoted to
looking at test and evaluation since it is a process that affects
everybody whether it's personal protective equipment or mechanical
assistance equipment, whether it's the user in the field or the developer
in the laboratory.
Test and evaluation is important to all. We have made it the
subject of the third session.
The last and final session is called "Wrap-up" in the
programme. We haven't defined this term, but I hope it will be the most
important session of all. Once we have been able to look at specific
problems like personal protective equipment or mechanical assistance
equipment and then examined the relationship of test and evaluation to the
development of equipment, I hope we will be able to construct an action
plan of some kind in the final session which will be the main product of
this workshop.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Welcome
by Lloyd Axworthy
Opening Remarks by Bob Suart
Appendix
1 - Complete Presentations
Appendix
2 - Poster Presentations
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