Do you work for the only company in the world that can solve Tom Cellucci’s problem? If so, he’d like to hear from you. As chief commercialization officer of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), he is responsible for identifying, evaluating, and commercializing technology that meets the operational requirements of the DHS and its end users.
During the IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security held recently in Boston, Cellucci said that he receives several e-mails a day from companies telling him that they’re “the only one in the world” with a specific product or capability. In most cases, he said, they’re “solutions looking for a problem.” He suggested that these companies should show him how they’re different.
Dennis Treece, director of corporate security for the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), has a similar story. He works closely with the DHS’s Transportation Security Agency (TSA) to help guide innovative technologies and programs. Treece said he’s constantly hearing from vendors who think they have the perfect product, but don’t understand the problem. “A technology that may have security benefits could also be hugely disruptive to our operations,” he said.
As a result, the United States is having trouble reaching many of its homeland security goals, such as checking all cargo containers for nuclear weapons before they leave foreign seaports and tracking the more than 330,000 privately owned vehicles that pass through U.S. borders every day, presenting a potential risk to national security.
This doesn’t mean the DHS S&T is without a shopping list. In fact, the directorate’s list is long and getting longer, according to a report on high-priority technology needs published recently by the DHS S&T.
TUNNEL VISION
Border security is a top priority, and the S&T directorate is shopping for technologies that support tunnel and rugged terrain detection. One development reported at the IEEE conference in Boston is a system that would be deployed at U.S. borders for the passive detection of clandestine tunnels.
So far, almost all of the tunnels along U.S. borders have been discovered through human intelligence assets rather than by technology. But the National Center for Physical Acoustics (NCPA) at the University of Mississippi hopes to change that with a detection technique it’s currently evaluating, a non-contact remote sensing technology that can detect and locate underground tunnels using a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV).
The technique is based on sensing acoustic or seismic vibrations created in the tunnel. Several tests have been conducted, but the best results came from using a single-beam LDV and an accelerometer on the surface of the ground above a tunnel and then generating a seismic pulse in the tunnel using a hammer.
Unlike a geophone or an accelerometer, the LDV has several advantages over contact sensors for tunnel detection. It’s easy to deploy, and it’s highly mobile. It also covers a lot of ground.
Experiments by NCPA teams have successfully used triangulation and seismic imaging to detect vibrations within tunnels, although sensing greatly depends on the properties of the ground. The NCPA plans further development of this technique, using mainly multi-beam LDVs.
The DHS is also looking at how to improve its intrusion detection with wide-area surveillance radars for perimeters and borders. One possibility, also reported at the IEEE conference, is a new generation of ground surveillance radars.
By design, the radars can rapidly and continuously scan 360° and detect movement in any lighting and virtually any weather conditions. They also have an extremely low false-alarm rate and are easier to operate than earlier versions, especially in networks of many units.
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