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The dean of Stevens’ Schaefer School of Engineering and Science also says that the focus on the security of the shipping supply chain—from a ship’s origin to U.S. ports—has strengthened.
But this maritime expert knows that an act of terror in the nation’s ports is an ongoing, nagging threat.
“The risk is real, and certainly is the risk of an intentional, man-made event,” he says.
Now, Bruno and his team from across the country will be a vital link in the chain that helps to keep America safer.
Bruno is the lead researcher for the new Center for Secure & Resilient Maritime Commerce (CSR) at Stevens, a national effort being led by Stevens, with university partners, to help keep the nation’s ports safe.
This past February, Stevens learned that it had been chosen to co-lead a new Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, known as the Center of Excellence for Maritime, Island and Port Security. Stevens and co-leader the University of Hawaii are charged with conducting research, coming up with ideas for new technology and developing new ways to strengthen maritime domain awareness and safeguard populations and properties unique to U.S. islands, and remote and extreme environments. Stevens will lead research and education in port security, while the University of Hawaii will lead research in maritime and island security. The Center will receive a grant of $2 million a year for four to six years for its work.
In the area of port security, Stevens is leading an impressive team that includes MIT, Rutgers University, the University of Miami, the University of Puerto Rico, Monmouth University and the United States Merchant Marine Academy.
The Stevens team won the designation after more than a year of proposal writing, interviews, visits, and a lot of hard work, says Bruno, who spoke in his office inside Edwin A. Stevens Hall in July. Just several days earlier, an impressive group including top DHS officials, Congressmen and research partners had visited Stevens to formally launch the new center. Bruno smiles as he recalls the excitement of that launch day and the moment he first got the call from the DHS.
“Congratulations, you’re it,” they said.
“I was very excited,” Bruno says. “It’s a great thing for the university and one of the best, if not the best, gatherings of faculty, staff and students.
“Stevens is an equal to all those we perceive as our peers. The message is clear: in this area, and in several other areas, Stevens is poised to be a national leader.”
The Stevens research team for CSR is impressive. Some 100 people from Stevens— deans, professors, researchers, graduate and undergraduate students—will be working on this effort, with the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science, Howe School of Technology Management and the School of Systems and Enterprises all involved.
Stevens will conduct research in two areas: surveillance of ships in New York Harbor, through the development of sensors, and the resiliency of the Maritime Transportation System in the event of an attack or other disruption.
The CSR’s mandate is clear: look at the behavior of small vessels in and near the nation’s ports, beginning with New York Harbor, and learn about their possibly suspicious behavior—in relation to their expected behavior, Bruno says.
“Our aim is to provide detection capabilities for small vessels,” Bruno says. “It’s a very difficult problem which might represent a threat to one of our facilities here and ships in the harbor.”
Within this area of “surveillance,” Stevens’ own researchers will be focusing on several areas, including an area of Stevens expertise: camera-based, high resolution sensors. Researchers within the Physics Department will aim to develop higher resolution sensors (Some sensor technology already exists and is now being used.) that would be based on land and sea to examine the movement and behavior of ships. One goal is to also develop radically new types of sensors that can detect underwater objects. Meanwhile, another partner—the University of Miami—will aim to develop satellite, space-based sensors that can see ships at sea as well as their containers. Rutgers University, meanwhile, will work with Stevens to develop radar that can detect ships from the beach and over the horizon.
“Can we gather information from satellites, the environment and high-resolution sensors and can we say for certain that something not normal is occurring?” Bruno says.
Sensors can also be dual use, from detecting the path of an oil spill to recognizing the release of a possibly dangerous airborne substance, Bruno said. The technology will also be invaluable in telling first responders, such as emergency medical workers and police, where to go in the event of an attack, he said.
Meanwhile, researchers from Stevens’ Center for Maritime Systems will focus on their area of expertise—observing and forecasting of the marine environment in and around New York Harbor. Having a deep understanding of the various physical aspects of that environment—winds, the water’s saline concentration and other characteristics—is vital.
“One philosophy that we’ve had is the better you know your environment and the longer you study it, the more you are able to identify when something unusual occurs,” Bruno said.
Within Stevens’ “surveillance” goal, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science will also work on issues such as pattern recognition and object tracing.
Stevens’ second major area of research will be resiliency. Teaming with MIT, Stevens researchers from the School of Engineering and Science and the School of Systems and Enterprises will try to determine how the Maritime Transportation System could be made more resilient in the face of a disruptive event that could cause not only death and injury but also a threat to the flow of global commerce.
Finally, researchers from the Howe School will be working on the issues of “hostile intent” in the maritime environment and improvement of emergency response to an intentional attack or disaster, among other issues.
Dr. Jeff Nickerson, an associate professor with the Howe School of Technology Management, and his team will focus on emergency response to a terrorist attack or natural disaster on the maritime system, how decisions are made in these situations and ways to develop technology to improve decision making and response.
Nickerson, who has a Ph.D. in computer science and has analyzed the attack on the SS Cole for the Navy, said that his team may use simulation to model the way an emergency response situation may work. Often during emergencies, two things happen: either emergency responders receive too little information, as radios and cell phone towers break down, or they are flooded with too much information, he said.
“We are looking at the human aspect of it—how much is too little and how much is too much (information),” he said.
Covering many geographies and various parts of the country, with various organizations involved in homeland security, DHS and its emergency response issues are much more complicated, Nickerson said. At the same time, many lives are often at stake.
“These are the hardest coordination problems and have a huge impact,” he said. “It’s very high-stakes and a very intricate and challenging response problem.”
As Stevens leads its Center of Excellence for Port Security and conducts its own research, four other new DHS Centers of Excellence across the country—with 11 universities represented all together—will be doing research in other critical areas of homeland security, including explosives detection, mitigation and response; transportation safety; border security and immigration; and natural disasters, coastal infrastructure and emergency management.
Dr. Bruno points out that much of the knowledge and technology developed at Stevens will later be transferred to the DHS, which will try then to develop it and bring it to market.
And while the research is vital, Stevens and its partners have a second crucial mission for the DHS—education.
“DHS is very serious about using this Center as a vehicle to attract young people to engineering and science,” Bruno says. The hope is that—with such exciting new research opportunities and new courses at Stevens in maritime security—more young people will want to take jobs with the DHS.
“The nation is more secure with a more technological work force,” Bruno said. “The general aim is that a larger number of American students will enter more careers in engineering and science.”
With this mission of education in mind, Bruno says that he expects, at Stevens, to expand student research opportunities and internships; to add more graduate courses in maritime security; and to allow students to take courses at partner universities. CSR would also educate professionals already in the field and serve as the R&D for the Coast Guard, FEMA and other areas of the DHS.
One exciting new initiative is the Summer Institute for Maritime Security. Every summer, Bruno proposes gathering the “best of the best” graduate students from partner schools across the country, who would be given a problem to tackle, in the hope that they would come up with creative solutions.
Several times during this interview, Dr. Bruno spoke of the importance of team work between faculty and students, and of the Center, with all of its diverse members, being a true partnership.
They have not won a one or two-year grant. The Stevens team and its partners have been given the chance to work together for six years.
“That’s when a break through can happen,” Bruno says.
“We expect to do significant things.”
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