Defender Trailblazers

Oct 18, 2023 | Business

Defender Trailblazers those who embrace the impossible to change the face of rugby, from overcoming disability to tackling discrimination

WEBWIRE –

Defender Trailblazers individuals who represent the very best of rugby and inspire others to be capable of great things. 6 Defender Trailblazers have been identified – a group of inspiring individuals who, like Defender, encourage others to do exceptional things and strive to achieve more in a world full of potential.

Each has demonstrated immense courage, inner strength and determination in the face of adversity. The Defender Trailblazers have been immortalised in statue form, made with steel reclaimed from the vehicle chassis production process using 3D scanning technology.

The Defender Trailblazers are:

  • Ryuichi Nagayama:the oldest active member of Fuwaku Rugby Club is a 90-year-old practicing doctor who lives for the sport. He and his teammates are tackling ageism and he intends to play until he is physically unable to take to the pitch. Ryuichi explains his mindset, by asking: Without rugby, what would I become?
  • Cyril Leroy:founder of Les Gaillards, the first LGBT+ friendly rugby club in France, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2023. The club brings together players of all genders, ages, sexual orientations, origins and sporting backgrounds and unites around the values of rugby.
  • Jacob Pickering:Jacob, 14, was born without his left forearm due to congenital upper limb deficiency, but he hasnt let this stop him playing the game he loves. He began playing at the age of nine and relishes the physical challenge he loves tackling.
  • Zainab Alema:a female Muslim rugby player, Zainab runs Muslimah Rugby, a community for Muslim women in rugby. She is also founder of Studs In The Mud, a non-profit project that supports rugby in Ghana. She was shortlisted in the sports category for the 2022 Women of the Future awards.
  • Kylie Grimes:in 2009, Kylie started playing for the London Wheelchair Rugby Club, and then for Great Britain in 2011, before going on to play at the 2012 Paralympics. She also cycled 450km from Vietnam to Cambodia after a life-changing spinal injury to raise money for Regain, a charity dedicated to helping newly injured tetraplegics back into sport.
  • Irtiqa Ayoub:the 28-year-old from Kashmir, India, is levelling the playing field by introducing rugby to women in Kashmir and Muslims in the wider community. She dreams of playing for India and is the youngest Rugby Development Office

Further information

About Defender

Defender embraces the impossible. Each member of the Defender family is purposefully designed, highly desirable and seriously durable. A modern-day hero that respects the past but at the same time anticipates the future.

Available in 90, 110 and 130 body styles, with up to eight seats, each has a charisma of its own.

As part of a sustainability-rich vision of modern luxury by design, Defender 110 is available as an electric hybrid.

Defender Hard Top means business, with 90 and 110 body styles for professional capability.

A beacon of liberty since 1948, Defender supports humanitarian and conservation work with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the Tusk Trust.

The Defender brand is underpinned by Land Rover a mark of trust built on 75 years of expertise in technology and world-leading off-road capability.

Defender is designed and engineered in the UK and sold in 121 countries. It belongs to the JLR house of brands alongside Range Rover, Discovery and Jaguar.

Defender & Rugby

Defender, proud Worldwide Partner of Rugby World Cup France 2023, has over 20 years heritage within rugby around the world, from grassroots to elite. As Official Vehicle of Rugby World Cup 2023, Defender will play a functional role to the tournament organisers providing a fleet of cars to World Rugby helping facilitate the sporting event as well as providing Defender experiences within the Official Rugby Village in central Paris.

Defenders campaign, Defenders of tomorrow, celebrates the diversity and inclusivity of the game, especially at youth level, with 96 mascots taking to the field. Defenders of Tomorrow aims to find special youngsters who want to change the world for the better. Whether at home, school, in the local community or their rugby club, Defenders of Tomorrow play an active role in improving the lives of others around them. Every chosen Defender of Tomorrow will act as a mascot in the Rugby World Cup 2023, with Defender supporting the cause they are passionate about to protect and promote it for the future.

Defenders campaign for the Rugby World Cup 2023 celebrates those who have demonstrated the courage and inner strength to overcome what others may have seen as impossible. 6 Defender Trailblazers have been identified – a group of inspiring individuals who represent the very best of rugby and, like Defender, encourage others to do exceptional things and strive to achieve more in a world full of potential. They have demonstrated immense courage, inner strength and determination in the face of adversity.

Important notice

JLR is constantly seeking ways to improve the specification, design and production of its vehicles, parts and accessories and alterations take place continually. Whilst every effort is made to produce up-to-date literature, this document should not be regarded as an infallible guide to current specifications or availability, nor does it constitute an offer for the sale of any particular vehicle, part or accessory. All figures are manufacturers estimates.

D.U.N.E Defender (Drainage Under Natural Environment Defender) Patents Coastal Resiliency Protection

Jan 27, 2022 | Books, Business

Green Infrastructure System combines Natural Defenses and Man-Made Drainage and Pedestrian Access to protect coastlines, wetlands and riverine environments.

JUPITER, Fla. – Jan. 25, 2022 – PRLog — Global Integrated Assets, LLC  announced today that it had achieved patent protection for its green infrastructure system, D.U.N.E. Defender (Drainage Under Natural Environment Defender) to provide omnichannel shoreline protection from sea-level rise, storm surge and other flooding events. D.U.N.E. Defender adds another arrow in the climate resiliency defense quiver for governments, communities, corporations and homeowners. The D.U.N.E. Defender System combines and enhances natural shoreline defenses like sand dunes, marshes, riverbanks, etc. with an innovative modified pre-cast concrete drainage structure. The structure enhances the natural defenses and provides pedestrian access in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Billions of dollars of damage to infrastructure, homes and commercial properties is focusing attention on resiliency planning. In the United States in 2021, there were twenty meteorological events that accounted for over $1 billion in damage, each. Natural defenses like dunes and marshes have provided protection for millennia, but these more intense storms are proving that even Mother Nature needs assistance. Additionally, the US Census Bureau estimates that 29% of the US population lives within coastline counties with 28.7% of businesses also operating within those counties, putting many people, businesses and infrastructure at risk from flooding events.

D.U.N.E. Defender will:

  • Utilize precast concrete drainage culverts modified to include drainage inlets along their top side;
  • Be integrated into the dune or other natural defenses to be unobtrusive to the environment;
  • Be topped by a pedestrian boardwalk providing access to a coastline in an aesthetically pleasing way;
  • The culvert will be integrated into the natural environments to hide it from view while still allowing floodwaters that overtop the natural environment to drain to the interior of the culvert;
  • The floodwaters will be directed to planned holding areas or redirected out to the body of water from which they came.

Edmond (“Ed”) Prins, AIA, CEO said, “Being of Dutch descent, I witnessed first-hand how the people of the Netherlands successfully battled the North Sea utilizing innovative infrastructure and the protection of natural defenses.” He continued, “D.U.N.E. Defender is designed to combine the best of both worlds, modifying concrete culverts to allow for drainage of flooding waters that overtop any natural environments and combining them with natural defenses to produce more effective protection for all manner of shorelines.”

D.U.N.E. Defender is the culmination of several years of research and design. Prins said, “My background in architecture and real estate development allowed me to look at utilizing existing combinations of man-made structures in new and innovative ways to help mitigate the effects of these enhanced events.” Until now most products like steel and concrete seawalls, stone groins and jetties have been used extensively but are not visually unobtrusive, sometimes block access, or in many cases, do not truly provide environmentally effective protection from flooding events.

D.U.N.E. Defender is the first of several new resiliency-focused products in the development stage. With more intense and frequent storms, these products including D.U.N.E. Defender will aid governments, communities, businesses and homeowners to be resilient and mitigate the huge financial losses and human impacts of these events.

Global Integrated Assets, LLC

Global Integrated Assets (“http://www.globalintegratedassets.com”) is a global management consulting firm committed to partnering with business and governmental leaders to address their challenges and develop and implement strategic solutions for operational, financial and social impact from owned and leased fixed assets. GIA’s strategic solutions transform the way these organizations work, creating change and value for all of their stakeholders. Visualizing a fully integrated organization, GIA’s solutions create agile, resilient and sustainable changes that will contribute to ESG initiatives by understanding the interdependencies between an organization’s people, place and business ecosystem.

Edmond “Ed” Prins, AIA, Founder and Principal of Global Integrated Assets is an architect and urban planner and a life-long corporate asset integrator who has provided financially-driven Integrated Asset solutions to over 40 of the Fortune 1000 C-Suites. Throughout his career, he created bottom-line returns of over $1.6 billion through the creation and implementation of these Integrated Asset solutions, which have produced enhanced transactions, operational improvements, sustainability, and resiliency results.

Edmond “Ed” Prins

CEO

561-445-9476

ed.prins@globalintegratedassets.com