About
Objectives
The objectives of the Standoff Technology Integration and Demonstration Program are to:
- Develop, test, and evaluate explosives countermeasure architectures using commercial-off-the-shelf and near-commercial technologies and innovative approaches to protect crowds at large public events from person-borne and vehicle-borne attacks from improvised explosive devices.
- Integrate technologies into a scalable system to enhance the performance of individual countermeasures and enable the cost-effective operation of multiple sensor systems.
- Provide feedback from testing and evaluation to technology developers to focus and accelerate the development of solutions to address key gaps in countermeasure architecture.
- Develop agile test bed(s), testing protocols, and standards to facilitate testing and evaluation of promising countermeasure technologies and integrated systems in real-world settings and operational scenarios.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Role
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 19 calls for the development of a national strategy and implementation plan on the prevention and detection of, protection against, and response to terrorist use of explosives in the United States. In support of this directive, The Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate develops training materials on the IED threat, and develops a national campaign to increase awareness of IEDs.
The Department of Homeland Security is identifying commercially available technical solutions, modifying or maturing them to meet the requirements of unstructured crowds, integrating them into a system, testing them in crowd conditions, and providing feedback to technology vendors. Feedback is provided to industry and academia in cases where an important feature or capabilities don't yet exist.
The Department of Homeland Security's Organization and Customers
The Department of Homeland Security's counter-IED program is part of the Explosives Division of the Science and Technology Directorate.
Within the Department of Homeland Security, the primary customers of the Explosives Division are the Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, Office of Bombing Prevention, Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard. Within the private sector, potential customers for this capability include operators of venues, amusement parks, convention centers, malls, casinos, and other locations where crowds gather.
Technical Team
Managed by: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory. Iconal Technology also serves on the technical team.
Agency working group: The Interagency Standoff Explosives Detection and Defeat (ISEDD) Working Group advises The Department on the Standoff Technology Integration and Demonstration Program and offers an important forum for a collaboration of domestic and international agencies involved in the development, testing, or use of explosives countermeasures. ISEDD standing subcommittees focus on topics such as the technology pipeline, requirements, and testing protocols.
ISEDD members represent various government agencies.
Other Partners
- STIDP is working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to coordinate, leverage, and advance video-based geo-registered tracking technology. In concert with NIST, STIDP is working with other government agencies, industry, and academia to develop requirements for creating a large public event video data set that the community could use to evaluate and advance computer-based tracking.
- 2008 field test partners: Industry—Thermal Matrix, SET Corporation, GE; Test bed partners—VenuWorks, City of Kennewick, Tri-City Americans.
