Final report on Communication, Dissemination & Exploitation

The success of the communication and dissemination activities and the public outreach of the Project COURAGEOUS significantly outpaced expectations and achievements of the project team due to the engagement with the CUAS industry, member countries and global awareness of the project due to the work of the project team,
This report provides a detailed overview of Project COURAGEOUS activities as well as an assessment of their outreach and impact. It also reflects on the lessons learned of Project COURAGEOUS communication activities, including barriers and success formats. Key highlights are summarised below:
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LinkedIn online network community: Project COURAGEOUS created itself an online network to share updates around the project progress, key issues around CUAS and any announcements that required outreach and community engagement.
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Participation in EU specific initiatives ranging from ENLETS CUAS Working Group to initiatives run by EURWINGS exploring the issue of drone incursions at airports.
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Attending and presenting at numerous conferences run by European and Global partners ranging from the United Nations, Federal Aviation Authority (United States) and Global Counter Terrorism Form,
To maximize the impact of all dissemination activities, a clear strategy was defined, and specific objectives were identified. To ensure that the COURAGEOUS results and framework were disseminated according to the expectations of all consortium members, strategic objectives for all dissemination and communication activities have been identified and are presented below. These objectives are:
1)
To ensure that target audiences are convinced that results will be achieved better than otherwise possible because of European collaboration on the COURAGEOUS project.
2)
To demonstrate how the outcomes of the COURAGEOUS project will be relevant to law enforcement among European citizens. In addition, the relevance will be demonstrated by creating a framework that can be applied by law enforcement within European member states and illustrating the different applicable scenarios where the framework can be applied.
3)
To assure where possible, the results of the COURAGEOUS project influence policymakers and decision-) makers in industry and the scientific community to ensure the long-term impact of the project.
4)
To ensure that all communication produced is engaging and interesting to the target audience.
The dissemination strategy enabled Project COURAGEOUS to build a global awareness around an EU funded project and as the project evolved and developed the interest from EU Member States and countries outside the EU were interested in the methodology being developed and tested at each event.
As the project started during the Covid-19 pandemic –planned COURAGEOUS events were rescheduled and moved on-line. Despite the need to replan events and move on-line, the team had ensured that communication and dissemination activities have continued.

The team proposed a higher effort in communication through alternative media, both internally and for external events, and COURAGEOUS was successfully part of all events as originally planned. There was also a higher effort on social media communication to replace the face-to-face events and contact with other projects and industry colleagues, using Twitter/LinkedIn as the social media platforms for COURAGEOUS.
Whilst most of the first half of COURAGEOUS communication activities were held on-line, the team worked towards a regular presence at events, and communication and dissemination activities were adapted so a successful communication and dissemination report could be presented on this deliverable.
In the second half of the project timeline, the dissemination and communication activities ramped up dramatically, for multiple reasons:
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The release of COVID-restrictions enabled more physical events;
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The validation trials sparked significant interest;
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The CENELEC Workshop Agreement (CWA) activities in collaboration with industry caught significant attention from the C-UAS industry;
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As the project got known better within the C-UAS world, it got easier to communicate about it.
This report focuses heavily on reporting the communication and dissemination activities, which are enumerated in detail in the Appendix 1. For exploitation – related activities, we refer the reader to D6.4, which tackles the standardisation activities and the CWA – formation process, as it is this standardisation activity that will drive the further exploitation of the COURAGEOUS results.