United Nations Development Programme brief · March 2026
Community Underwater Ordnance Mapper
Public summary of an autonomous survey concept for contaminated waterways. The work was taken to final-stage review and not taken forward.
The Problem
Communities living alongside contaminated waterways often know where it is dangerous: boats sink, nets snag, and certain reaches are avoided. What is missing is an affordable way to turn that local knowledge into a repeatable map that can be shared with professional clearance teams.
The working constraint is not only detection. A low-cost sensor still becomes an expensive system if it needs a hired boat, a crew, fuel, specialist operators, and people working on contaminated water.
The Concept
A low-cost autonomous vessel for preliminary survey. One operator launches, monitors and retrieves it from the bank. The system covers a waterway, records the position of anything that disturbs the local magnetic field, and produces a map a clearance team can act on.
The design deliberately used mature open-source autopilot firmware and commodity parts. That kept the work focused on system integration, evidence, operating model and validation rather than speculative software claims.
The Analytical Move
The whole operation was costed, not just the instrument. Boat hire, personnel exposure, survey coverage, repeatability, local deployment and map handover were all treated as part of the system boundary.
Detection claims were bounded by published sensor specifications and the literature on finding ordnance underwater. Limitations were declared explicitly so the work could be judged on defensible assumptions rather than presentation confidence.
What The Pack Demonstrated
- System architecture across sensor, platform, operator and output.
- Costed bill of materials for a low-capital survey capability.
- An operating model designed around community use from the bank.
- Compatibility with standard mine-action information handover.
- A risk register and validation plan rather than unqualified performance claims.
Why It Belongs Here
Reaching final-stage review is useful evidence of the underlying work: problem framing, open-source research, operational costing, honest technical limits, and writing somebody can act on.
The work was produced independently, in response to a requirement the organisation published openly, and offered to it for consideration. It was not a commissioned engagement.
The Documents
Public case note · 10 pages
The reasoning, in brief
The problem, the system logic, the economics, the declared limits and the outcome — written for a reader who wants the argument without the engineering behind it.
Open the case noteSubmitted document · 17 pages
The document itself, in full
The whole thing as prepared: detection physics, system architecture, bill of materials, programme economics, safety doctrine, risk register and validation plan. Not a summary of the work — the work.
Open the submitted documentThe submitted document is published as a public release version. Removed for release: the filing record appendix, and any detail identifying how or where the document was lodged. No technical content, cost, limitation or risk has been altered. Nothing shared in confidence by the issuing organisation is reproduced, and intellectual property in the concept is retained in full.