By Noah Ross
Constantly developing rural safety and security solutions which can apply asymmetrically, enhancing commercial ‘situational awareness’ in the face of challenges new and longstanding in sectors such as mining, smart transportation and command and control defence services remain critical to the economic stability of many emerging African states on the continent.
Accordingly, Paramount Advanced Technologies (PAT), a subsidiary of the African-based global defence and aerospace company Paramount Group, this week announced the establishment of an exciting partnership with Hexagon’s Geospatial and Safety & Infrastructure division. Working alongside the global leader in Autonomous Connected Ecosystems (ACE), a state where data is connected seamlessly through the convergence of the physical world with the digital, Paramount Advanced Technologies will be providing enhanced African rural safety and security solutions, including smart transportation, displacement monitoring, mining security and infrastructure monitoring, facilities and inventory management, public records management, command and control and indeed tactical emergency services.
In a recently distributed press release, Paramount Advanced Technologies CEO Ralph Mills, stated: “Paramount Advanced Technologies’ cutting edge research and development (R&D) and systems integration expertise which has delivered solutions effectively across the African continent, coupled with the technological innovation and overarching support that Hexagon brings from decades of system deployments globally makes for an impactful partnership to the betterment of the continent’s infrastructure and security capabilities, an alliance which we are privileged to announce”.
Paramount Advanced Technologies’ Integrated and Smart Systems (ISS) is responsible for business across a myriad of commercial sectors, leveraging the power of the situational awareness of which I previously referred to support complex and critical operational requirements. The ‘PAT Business Unit’ was established with a mandate to apply technology derived from best-of-breed industry partnerships to “…provide proactive solutions to the challenges inherent in multiple domains, with a focus on rural safety and security, smart and safe cities, smart agriculture, disaster management, infrastructure protection and smart mining”.
“We live in exciting times, where the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) upon us is driven by disruptive technologies such as IoT, augmented reality, blockchain, drones and robotics, amongst others. Technological changes are rapid while the availability of unstructured data is prolific,” Mills continued. “The challenge before us is to make sense of that data, leveraging real-time information and intelligence to solve real-world problems, ensuring that organizations are best aligned to harness the advantages of this era by being digitally enabled, so as to avoid the risk of being left behind.”
Such dynamic collaborations between like minded organizations with similar missions of leveraging the clear and present boons in 4IR inspired technologies have the potential to reshape business as usual across a diverse array of industries, while fostering new levels safety and security for their respective workforces.
I believe it to be pertinent to report on quiet but critical developments such as this, as the achievements of such partnerships bear fruit across the African continent.
Noah Ross is a Public Policy Analyst
