Mine Kafon was established with a humanitarian goal in mind, and addresses a problem of great importance which is often neglected: the use of landmines. Around the world, anti-personnel landmines continue to have tragic, unintended consequences years after a battle and even years after the entire war has ended. As time passes, even those who planted them often forget the location of landmines. These mines continue to be functional for many decades, causing further damage, injury and death. More than 100 million active landmines plague 70 countries worldwide, with more being deployed even in 2020. The cost of planting a mine varies between € 2,7 and € 27, while the cost of removing a mine varies between € 270 and € 900. Using current technologies, clearing or even detecting all land mines around the world would take over 1100 years, with costs rising as high as € 90 billion. Established processes like manual demining are not efficient enough - they are slow, dangerous and expensive.
Therefore, Mine Kafon's unmanned demining system (MKD) was born out of a frustration with current methods, their slow speed, high costs and relative inefficiency. The final objective is to provide a reliable and safe detection system that delivers accurate updates and information on mine clearing operations, describing contaminated and cleared areas through an intuitive online platform. This would not only provide a better cost-value proposition for ongoing demining projects, but also kickstarting a variety of other projects discontinued due to high costs, lack of efficiency and posing risk to human and/or animal lives. By achieving this, millions of people around the world would stop living in fear, and the lands currently occupied by landmines could be converted for construction or agriculture purposes, allowing local communities to thrive.
