The GICHD Innovation Conference 2025

Addresses the urgent need for scalable digital solutions in ammunition management, focusing on gaps in safety, security, and sustainability, and exploring barriers, innovations, and collaboration opportunities in low-capacity and conflict-affected contexts.

Room: 2.4

How can mine action organizations turn data into better decisions? This session shows how operational analysis and smarter information management can drive impact, harnessing digital innovations while tackling challenges like data quality and interoperability.

Access to prostheses is essential for survivors’ dignity and inclusion, yet too often remains short-term and unsustainable. This session explores how innovations in technology, delivery models, and partnerships can make assistive technology affordable, reliable, and integrated into long-term care systems.

Room: 1.1

Can demining accidents during manual signal excavation be reduced through efficient and effective robotic means? This session shares field experience and engineering innovation on mechanization and semi-automation, exploring how solutions can be advanced while staying affordable, adaptable, and sustainable. 

Room: Sigma 

Coming soon

Coming soon

Room: Plenary

Subsurface detection remains one of the central challenges in the sector. Complexity in signal interpretation, different soil conditions, and testing standards still limit its use in mine action. Recent field trials of magnetometry, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems have provided opportunities to evaluate the maturity and applicability of these sensors, and to discuss the key bottlenecks for their further development and potential adoption.

Room:  2.4

Innovation is not just about new tools and methods—it’s about reimagining behaviors and redefining who gets to shape decisions and change – it’s about people. When we invite every voice and every story into the room we make mine action safer, more efficient, and more effective. Inclusion is not a checkbox exercise—it’s the power to innovate and do better. This session calls for bold, disruptive thinking – applying behavioral science, design thinking and exploring shared identities to go beyond raising awareness and truly transform how we lead. Not only in releasing land from explosive ordnance but also in building a more resilient future.

Room: 1.1

Innovation in mine action is not just about new technologies, it’s about creating the right conditions for tools to succeed. This session explores how engaging authorities, adapting standards, and rethinking methodologies can turn pilots into sustainable operational practices.

Room: Plenary

Remote sensing applications for survey are becoming mainstream. This session will explore the challenges, efficiencies and opportunities, focusing on advancements in drone imagery analysis and current field practice. Moreover, the session will highlight the structural changes needed to effectively incorporate these tools into the land release process, improving efficiency and decision-making in the field.

Room: 1.1

Operational logistics take up to 40% of operational budgets and a proportional time of field managers. From accommodation and basic services to transport and spare parts, this session explores how mine action can elevate such challenges and leverage existing innovative practices within the broader humanitarian sector to improve operational efficiency. 

Room: 2.4

Professionalization is essential to sustain excellence and safety in Mine Action, enhance accountability, improve operational outcomes, and support career development for practitioners worldwide. Beyond the substantial advance provided by the standardization of personnel competencies under IMAS, this session explores current initiatives and possible pathways toward standardized certification and accreditation across the sector. From adult training to curriculum accreditation and the role of technology, the discussion will highlight lessons from existing models and collaborative approaches that build trust and credibility.

Explores how gaps in intellectual property knowledge and local inventorship affect innovation in mine action, aiming to align IP strategies with operational needs by examining patent trends, responsible IP practices, and collaborative models that support both innovation and humanitarian access.

Room: 2.4

Operational, environmental, regulatory and safety challenges shape responses to underwater explosive ordnance contamination. This session examines current approaches based on risk management, survey and clearance, focusing on novel tools and methods, as well as the challenges of developing and sustaining underwater explosive ordnance capacities.

Room: Plenary

From advanced sensors to novel field applications, new approaches to detecting explosive substances are rapidly evolving. This session looks at emerging methods and examines both their potential impact and the challenges of moving such technologies from the lab into mine action operations. 
 

Room: 1.1

As explosive ordnance risks rise in emergencies, timely data collection and analysis for context-specific messaging is vital to protect civilians. This session explores how open-source intelligence (OSINT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are beginning to be applied across the Explosive Ordnance Risk Education (EORE) and Conflict Preparedness and Protection (CPP) project cycle. The objective is to identify partnerships that can help scale and sustain these emerging tools to enhance preparedness and protection of civilians.  

Room: Sigma 

Coming soon

Coming soon

This panel examines the often-overlooked issue of underwater explosive ordnance, highlighting its operational and policy challenges, and exploring how innovation, improved frameworks, and regional collaboration can enhance cost-efficient response efforts.