Award Data

The ability to navigate complex, dense X-ray images with occluded objects and superposition of potential threats presents a significant challenge for air cargo screeners.Explosive detection and threat interdiction is also challenging due to the varied ways threat actors conceal and disguise illicit activity.These factors work to reduce screening efficiency and throughput, as skids must be broken d ...

The DHS Science and Technology (S&T) Screening at Speed (SaS) program is a major program within S&Ts Transportation Security Administration (TSA) portfolio that addresses TSA Strategic Priorities and the Transportation Security Capability Analysis needs. A key element of the SaS program is the pursuit of an integrated curb-to-gate security system of systems to enable TSAs future comprehensive secu ...

The implementation of Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) provides an opportunity to make Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) more effective through improved situational awareness and operational / incident coordination. With these opportunities come the challenge of guarding against misleading information and malicious actors. This proposal describes an approach to address these issues to create a ...

This project will demonstrate a cost-effective high-speed millimeter wave camera that can image and resolve moving objects from 3 m to 30 m away to enable curb-to-gate screening for airports. Millimeter wave light is often used for security screening because it is safe to use on people and can penetrate packaging, bags, and clothing to identify both metallic and non-metallic objects. The technolog ...

The Apex Screening at Speed program fuses data from multiple sensor technologies and algorithms to detect potential threats in real time. The success of the program hinges on the fusion of data across multiple sensors to provide robust detection with no false negatives and few false positives. Another factor in the architecture of the system is that technology is continually evolving. This require ...

The goal of this research is to explore the feasibility of providing a low-cost Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution to assist underserved Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agencies of all sizes to better analyze and improve operations through real-time data analysis. Delivering a data analysis suite tuned to key performance indicators of EMS agencies as an online, cloud subscription will result ...

The Department of Homeland Security, the military, and civilian first responders have an urgent need for sensitive detectors of harmful materials such as biological and chemical warfare agents, toxic industrial chemicals, and explosives. Handheld instruments must be sensitive, be able to detect a wide variety of target compounds in a matter of seconds, reliably discriminate between innocuous and h ...

In Phase I we developed a machine learning method for predicting match score errors in iris imagery to determine the quality of the image. We now propose to develop a flexible and configurable tool for creating, refining, and applying such a match score predictor to any image quality assessment problem where a training signal can be identified. The tool will enable users to supply ground truth for ...

Achieving and maintaining effective control of our nation`s maritime borders which comprise 95,000 miles of shoreline and navigable waters, and 361 ports is an ongoing challenge. Due to greater numbers, increased maneuverability and reduced observables, smaller vessels pose unique and special risks. A complete accounting of all these small vessels that could be anywhere in the nearly 3.5 million s ...

It is clear from prior research that quality metrics can predict and improve recognition performance. As we add new quality metrics, however, determining a weighting scheme using simple rules for their combination becomes infeasible. This argues for a machine learning approach that will automatically determine the optimal weighting. We propose to develop a large set of quality metrics based on req ...