DHS adds foraging to tech arsenal
If the Department of Homeland Security
doesn't have a particular technology needed to solve a problem, it has
the option of going into "McGyver" mode, adapting what it can find to
make a suitable solution instead of turning to the formal federal
procurement process.
The agency scours tech ideas and
adaptable gear from other agencies, research groups or private industry,
or a combination of all those sources. Such "technology foraging,"
became a cornerstone of the DHS Science and Technology Directorate's
mission in 2011. In an S&T Snapshot
post on its website, Stephen Hancock, a former Navy aerospace
engineering duty officer who leads the S&T tech foraging initiative,
wrote that research managers canvas journals, patents, labs and forums
across the Internet looking for technologies that could be "readily
adaptable" to the agency's mission.
"When people think 'innovator,' they
think 'Thomas Edison'—a lab genius who created science breakthroughs,"
Hancock wrote. "But today we need innovators who can recognize a
breakthrough, adapt it, package it, and then field it. It is the
reinventing of invention itself. After all, we're not the only ones
facing the same kind of challenges."
DHS finds adaptable technologies in a
wide variety of places. One example, according to the snapshot document,
involved a collaboration between the Coast Guard and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Coast Guard needed a way to
track small watercraft that might be used to transport illegal
contraband. S&T developed software with NOAA that allows the Coast
Guard to take its own radar images of a bay, then tap into NOAA’s
coastal radar—normally used to monitor ocean currents and wave
action--to detect stealthy small vessels that might be hauling
contraband.
The article also mentions a
collaboration with NASA on disaster-victim detection technology, in
which S&T modified a NASA-developed human heartbeat detection
monitor for use in search-and-rescue operations.
"These successful examples of tech
foraging show how multiple investments from federal agencies can be
leveraged, especially when program managers actively look for
opportunities to re-purpose research and development, reducing costs and
creating new homeland security solutions," said Hancock, quoted in the
DHS document.
Although DHS spokeswoman Nicole Stickel
declined to comment on the specifics of how the program might get
technology to DHS users more quickly or cost-effectively, she did say
that the program "leverages existing research to save time and money
while jumpstarting a technology's application for homeland security."
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