Flanders accelerates innovation in security and defence
Security and resilience are increasingly shaping our economy, infrastructure and daily lives. Geopolitical tensions, hybrid threats, supply chain dependencies and digital threats make one thing clear: technological preparedness is no longer optional. Many of the solutions needed today lie at the intersection of civil and defence innovation.
Collaborate, innovate, deploy
Flanders offers companies, startups, knowledge institutions and public actors a unique opportunity to turn ideas into funded, tested and deployable solutions that address real-world security and defence challenges. By connecting with ecosystems of peers and experts, you can co-develop innovations, access resources, and scale technologies for both civilian and defence applications.
The framework enabling this is the Flemish Innovation and Industry Strategy for Security and Defence (VISD), launched by the Department of Work, Economy, Science, Innovation & Social Economy (WEWIS). VISD provides a structured approach to accelerate innovation from research to real-world deployment, bringing together government, industry and knowledge partners around shared priorities.
How VISD works
VISD is organised around priority domains and a strong ecosystem-driven approach. Dedicated programme managers actively build and connect networks of companies, startups, research organisations, and public authorities. They translate strategic roadmaps into concrete initiatives, help promising innovations mature and scale, and support their deployment to market.
VITO acts as programme manager for three key strategic domains: environment, energy, and geo-intelligence. In addition, as of January 2026 VITO has established a dedicated Security and Defence unit with separate governance, infrastructure, and digital systems to support this critical domain. From this setup, VITO actively supports security and defence stakeholders, research activities, ecosystem development, and alignment with Flemish, European, and international opportunities.
Three strategic roadmaps
Several strategic roadmaps have been developed within VISD. VITO contributed three of these, building on Flemish expertise with promising dual-use potential, applicable to both defence and civilian applications.
Strengthening situational awareness and decision-making through multi-sensor data fusion, edge intelligence, secure and sovereign geodata infrastructures, and interoperable decision-support platforms and digital twins aligned with EU and NATO systems.
Enhancing security and resilience through robust main-grid infrastructure, off-grid and deployable energy systems, diversified energy sources including nuclear options such as SMRs, and energy storage solutions to ensure continuity and autonomy.
Reinforcing security and defence readiness by addressing CBRNe threats, protecting soil, water and air and the infrastructures that depend on them, securing critical raw materials through circular approaches, and applying safe-and-sustainable-by-design principles across the full lifecycle.
Together, these domains support not only defence and security, but also crisis response, critical infrastructure protection, environmental resilience and industrial competitiveness.
Join the ecosystem
Organisations with ideas, technologies or innovation ambitions in geo-intelligence, energy, or environmental security are invited to connect, explore collaboration opportunities, and engage with programme managers to turn concepts into real projects.
Through VISD you can:
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access dedicated funding with a clear growth path in the coming years
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participate in focused ecosystems built around shared roadmaps and priority themes
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receive support to set up innovation projects and cross-sector collaborations
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connect more easily to European and international programmes
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find pathways to testing, validation, scaling and market uptake
For questions, partnership ideas, or project proposals, reach out via visd@vito.be. Updates on calls, initiatives, and matchmaking activities will be shared through the channels of WEWIS and VITO.
The official launch event on 6 February will bring together government, industry and knowledge institutions to kick off VISD and translate strategy into action.
Register here: Launch Event “A Boost for Flemish Defence Innovation and Industry: From Strategy to Action”
