The seminar brought senior officers from across the NATO force structure, academics and industry leaders to London, which served to highlight a densely populated and multicultural environment with a myriad of historic and modern architecture and infrastructure.
"The scale of the challenge to reclaim and defend such an environment is self-evident,
"We have a collective opportunity today to further our mutual understanding and to advance ideas on how we, the collective industry, academics and Service people, address the complexity of the urban environment," said Lieutenant General Nick Borton, Commander ARRC.
"The scale of the challenge to reclaim and defend such an environment is self-evident," added Borton. "More than that, we're witnessing it playing out every day in the barbarity and horrors of the urban destruction in Ukraine."
Lieutenant General Nick Borton, Commander ARRC, giving his opening address at the conference in London.
Operating in the urban environment has been a challenge for military formations dating back centuries and proposes the challenges to harmonize physical recovery of the ground, health and welfare of the population and the international perception of warfare.
Sahr Muhammedally from the Centre for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) presenting the gathered audience.
The seminar included panel discussions with experts from academia and non-government organisations, who outlined the challenges of mitigating civilian harm; contemporary perspectives of emerging battlefield geometry, urban defence and obstacles; and the different approaches to take solving the problems forward.
"We have a chance here to really get after probably one of the most challenging tasks or problems we face as an alliance," said Major General James Roddis, Director Strategy for Strategic Command, during his keynote address.
Major General James Roddis delivering his keynote address to the conference.
"This event is another important waypoint in our journey to becoming more multi domain by design and integrated by instinct."
Roddis highlighted there is a real threat, a point which he didn't need to reinforce to the audience, which included personnel from defence tech companies, ten NATO corps, U.S. Army V Corps and the Multidomain Task Force from the U.S Army Europe and Africa Command.
"To face the threat, we need to ensure every kind of defence can work seamlessly together alongside other government departments and allies," added Roddis.