At International Confex on 1 March, tech company Krowdthink announced it had won funding from the UK government’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), in a competition seeking ‘innovative ideas to reduce the threat from terrorist and malicious use of explosives and weapons in public spaces.’

DASA was tasked with engaging the UK technology community and successfully solicited a wide range of proposals for innovation and research into this challenging task.

Krowdthink’s approach is to enhance its venue-based communication and social platform, the Krowd®, to integrate venue security staff with the crowd they are charged with keeping safe.

Krowd® combines a secure social-engagement app, with features to enhance safety and security operations within high footfall spaces that are Wi-Fi enabled. It enables threat, event, venue and safety information to be shared via mobile devices, transforming ‘the crowd’ into a ‘virtual sensor’ to effectively identify threats and easily respond via alerts.

Its use is intended to support the UK Government Crowded Places Guidance, which identifies that we all have an important role in keeping ourselves safe. The Krowd makes this simpler and more accessible by combining integrated security features into a secure and private event app that both enhances customer experience at events and enables the crowd to keep personally safe.

“This is an exciting new sector for event technology to innovate and deliver new value,” said Geoff Revill, CEO and managing director of Krowdthink. “It’s difficult for event managers and some venue owners to invest in the safety of their visitors to the extent they would like – we will lower that cost barrier to make crowd safety a standard investment activity.”

Krowdthink is actively engaging with large venue and event organisers to explore the opportunity further as it drives towards its concept demonstration event in November this year.