ODDS 2022 – a Constant in an Industry in Transition

Experts, government representatives, technologists and commentators gathered in Austria’s stunning capital city of Vienna (11-13 April) to share recent technical developments in the fields of optical and digital document security.

The Optical & Digital Document Security™ (ODDS) Conference has its roots in the highly respected Optical Document Security™ Conference, held every two years since 1996, and Digital Document Security™, a spin-off event first held in 2019. In combining the two events, conference organisers Reconnaissance wanted to recognise the important role that optical technologies continue to play in securing documents as they transition to the digital domain.

Following the two seminars on the first day of the event covering ‘International Standards’ and ‘Securing Digital Currency and Identity’, the conference was opened (12 April) by Michael Fuchs, Austria Ministry of Interior, who stressed the continuing importance of protecting government issued documents against fraud.

Then after the welcome address from Ian Lancaster, Conference Chair, the attendees were treated to a thought provoking and, at some points, contentious keynote address from author, advisor and commentator – David Birch.

The first technical session, ‘The Transition’, looked at three distinct approaches to bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds. OeSD International (Austria), TECH5 (Switzerland) and COLOP Digital (Austria) each had their own strategy for the authentication of what are increasingly being called ‘phygital’ documents.

Following from this, ‘New Approaches to Document Security’ contained two papers on novel optical devices.

Peiman Hosseini from Bodle Technologies (UK) described a novel switchable optically variable ink (SOVI), which has the capability to switch between two stable, highly contrasting, colour states generated by an optical nano-cavity featuring ultra-thin phase change materials using laser excitation.

Caleb Meredith, from Pennsylvania State University (US) in his paper titled ‘Iridescent Films Utilising Structural Colour from Reflective Microstructures’ described a method for making iridescent security films exhibiting tuneable colour- shifting appearances, with wide angular colour separations. In his presentation he demonstrated an optical effect enabling the generation of optical interference from concave reflective microstructures ranging from 10 to 100 microns in size.

For the remainder of the first day, the conference split into two parallel streams: one for securing identity and the other for protecting currency & payments. In common, they described the use of optical and physical technologies for protecting against existing and emerging threats to the integrity of documents of value.

The conference reconvened to a single stream for the second day (13 April) to tackle the topical issues of the role of optical and digital technologies in securing health status passports, before taking technical submissions in the areas of micro- and nano- optical structures and other new approaches to document security.

Future editions of Holography News® will cover a selection of the papers in greater detail, but if the panel discussion in the final session is anything to go by, the future evolution of optical and digital document security is set to play an important role in the transition to digital documentation for some time to come.

The conference closed with the announcement that the next ODDS Conference will be held in Paris in February 2023.

And as attention now switches to Reconnaissance’s next secure document conference, Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum, Malta, 16-18 May – don’t miss out on catching up with colleagues, customers and friends by registering now at taxstamptraceabilityforum.com.