VerSich

Over the coming years and decades, knowledge and technology transfer from research to application is likely to transform and disrupt the everyday tasks and practices of security authorities in Germany and beyond. Notably the increasing usage of autonomous systems will come with a set of challenges regarding notions of e.g. user acceptability and trust. To ensure that these transitions are in line with societal norms, ethical, legal and social aspects need to be better integrated at an early stage of the technologies’ development and design process.

Approach and Goals

Alongside the identification of past, present and future challenges regarding the employment of autonomous systems in the security domain, the project shall further uncover methodological approaches that can help to address these very challenges through interdisciplinary research. The objectives of the VerSich project are hence two-fold: Firstly. it shall establish a roadmap of research topics which reflect the identified ethical, legal and social challenges.  Secondly, it aims to provide a methodological toolbox which shall serve the advancement of interdisciplinary research and responsible technology development at the Institute for the Protection of Maritime Infrastructures in particular and the German Aerospace Centre in general.

Innovation and Outlook

As novel technologies continue to permeate our society, anticipatory and interdisciplinary research approaches are necessary to circumvent that the technically feasible outpaces the morally acceptable. The findings of the VerSich project will contribute to the further definition and institutionalisation of the concept “responsibility by design”, thereby facilitating the development of autonomous systems that respond to societal demands regarding technologies’ explainability, fairness, safety, auditability.