Israel invests $1.6 million to develop new approaches for strengthening national resilience

The Israel Innovation Authority and the Tekuma Directorate announce a NIS 5 million ($1.6 million) plan for a new national research laboratory that will harvest and analyze real-time data on stress from the population in southern Israel to help startups, researchers, government entities, and academia develop new approaches to strengthening resilience.

Communities close to the Gaza Strip have suffered decades of stress from Palestinian terror, culminating in the Hamas invasion of Jewish communities on October 7, 2023, which saw the murder of 1,200 people and the abduction of 251, all of whom have since been returned, alive or dead.

Among the subjects to be explored at the laboratory in the southern city of Sderot will be sleep, behavior, emotion, environmental conditions, and responses to emergency situations.

Expected to open between October and March next year, the laboratory will be located in Sderot, near the Gaza border.

The idea, according to the Innovation Authority, is to plug two gaps: a lack of applied research infrastructure for studying mental health and resilience in a living community over time, and the absence of infrastructure to help industry development, validate, and scientifically prove technologies to aid resilience.

The Tekuma Authority, tasked by the government with rehabilitating the Gaza border area, hopes the new initiative will draw top scientists to the region and provide jobs.

A joint statement says, “Mental health and community resilience have become a strategic challenge for health systems, local authorities, education, welfare, and the defense system, but today decisions are made almost without continuous, objective, and integrative measurement of the population’s condition.”

The laboratory will collaborate with Ben-Gurion University and Sapir College, both located in southern Israel.