105005CAST – A Next-Generation Threat Detection System to Prevent Mass Casualty Attacks to Soft Targets and Protect Citizens’ LivesClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKEvents at large venues like arenas and stadia attract tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. **However, these urban 'soft targets' and their perimeters have recently become vulnerable to malicious mass casualty attacks.** The deadly atrocities at Manchester Arena and France's National Football Stadium are graphic examples of the increasing global threat of terrorism on soft targets. **These extremist terrorist attacks kill innocent people including children and lead to severe economic and social disruption.** In 2017, the five terror attacks in the UK, including the Manchester Bombing, led to economic losses of £3.5bn \[RAND Europe\]. The last six mass casualty attacks in Europe resulted in 188 deaths and 808 injuries \[Heritage Foundation\]. **Existing solutions** **such as portal-based detectors (whether metal detection or millimetre wave imagers) are ineffective for outside perimeter screening.** They are slow, labour-intensive and highly overt. They require individuals to divest their possessions, forcing them through a portal which becomes impractical, costly and creates a target in itself. Drones, CCTV, security guards and K9 units are merely observational methods and do not detect threats. **There is thus a large and growing need** to protect the perimeter of 'urban soft targets', before a threat can be realised, without causing disruption to the free flow of people or the venue. This project will develop CAST - **a novel, covert, mass casualty threat detection system based on processing signals from a networked array of advanced ferromagnetic sensors embedded into the built environment, to automatically detect threats.** Integrated with a video management system, CAST's innovative system will 'tag and track' a suspect once an alert has been triggered, allowing security operatives to intercept the individual far enough from the venue to prevent deadly attacks. However, detecting threats from the built environment reliably and accurately poses significant technical challenges, especially to discriminate against benign objects with similar magnetic signatures or interference from external sources. **Metrasens has a successful track-record of developing world-leading, award-winning ferromagnetic detection solutions and we currently export across 44 countries.** This Innovate UK project will allow us to capture a huge global export market and help address the government's top priority to fight terrorism. 5 years post-project, we expect to generate cumulative revenues and profit of £73.8m and £14.8m respectively, in turn creating 74 skilled jobs. **With a vast number of urban soft targets worldwide, this project will significantly boost UK exports, increase safety of citizens and protect infrastructure.**