Resilience Symposium 2022 is the third conference Allied Command Transformation has organized on Resilience and builds on years of military and civilian partnerships across NATO.
NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, General Philippe Lavigne recently opened the NATO Resilience Symposium 2022 in Warsaw, Poland. The event is sponsored by NATO Defence Policy and Planning Division, and co-organised with NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, Mr David van Weel; over 200 attendees from across Military, Political, Industry and Academic backgrounds came together to discuss key topics on Resilience and how they can be further developed.
“It is because resilience requires a comprehensive, holistic approach, and because of strong interdependencies” said General Lavigne during his opening remarks. “To be successfully built, resilience requires successful collaboration between civilian and military stakeholders and must consider these two mutually reinforcing layers.”
This year’s Resilience Symposium examined the Alliance’s Layered Resilience Concept, which is a key priority for NATO. The event featured key discussions on Military and Civilian partnerships, Space and NATO accredited Centres of Excellence, as well as vital contributions from Polish Government to learn how they have responded to the war in Ukraine.
The Symposium was also the opportunity to organize the first live demo of the Resilience Data Analytics Tool. This tool, developed by Allied Command Transformation Innovation Hub with the support of the NATO Communications and Information Agency, has recently been delivered to the Joint Force Command Brunssum. By coupling open-source data with big data analytics, machine learning, and data visualization, it visualizes and models the baseline requirements of national resilience capacities such as transportation, energy and communication at the operational level to provide an early warning system for potential disruptions to NATO missions. The demo confirmed the tremendous potential for the Nations to benefit from it.
“There are many changes happening and many more are still to come.” said Deputy Secretary General of NATO, Mr Mircea Geoană. “Allies will need to identify lessons and learn from them not only because of the lasting consequences of COVID-19 or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but also as a part of our long-term response to climate change and evolving technologies, to name but a few areas.”
The Supreme Allied Commander Transformation is one of NATO’s two strategic commanders. Allied Command Transformation was created in 2003 to ensure the Alliance has the requisite thinking, capabilities and education and training to keep a military edge against any and all adversaries. Allied Command Transformation harnesses innovative principles to enhance NATO’s ability to respond to threats with a speedy and agile military instrument of power. Allied Command Transformation ensures that NATO’s war fighting capabilities remain relevant, provides an indispensable understanding of current and future security challenges, and contributes to the development of NATO doctrine, concepts and interoperability standards. The Command is also responsible for NATO’s training and education programs.
“I expect that this symposium will allow us, at NATO, to expand our views and perspectives on resilience and to further improve our Resilience Concept. I also expect we, together, will be able to identify priorities and areas of closer cooperation between military and civilian stakeholders,” concluded General Lavigne.
