Center for Defense and Homeland Security
C4ISR – Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
According to the Department of Homeland Security, "The attack on 9/11 demonstrated
profoundly the danger to first responders and the public when those responding to emergencies
cannot communicate effectively. The ability to talk across disciplines and jurisdictions,
exchanging voice and/or data on demand, in real time, when authorized, is critically important
as is having disaster management plans to deal with (man-made and natural catastrophic
disasters). Additionally, military and intelligence agencies are aggressively using C4ISR emerging technologies in hostile situations to collect, collate, and distribute information across a network into command and backspace information technology management systems, which can manipulate that information to inform to key decision makers."
C4ISR Research
The Communications and Interoperability team of CDHS scholars will focus its research on Interoperable communication for emergency responders; as well as visualization and simulation data application techniques, discrete mathematics methods, and game theory to diverse information, including development of new approaches to simulating multiple threats of man-made and natural catastrophic disasters.
The Advanced Surveillance and Monitoring team of CDHS scholars will focus its research on the integration of multiple types of sensing technologies and intelligent algorithms to allow for more efficient acquisition and interpretation of data, including identification and tracking in crowded environments and enhanced detection and reporting of anomalous activities. Outcomes from this team’s research will enable the assessment of relative threats and vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure; estimation of consequences of natural disasters or terrorist attacks to critical infrastructure; application of engineering technologies or tools to enhance DHS and DOD’s ability to prepare, predict, and minimize or prevent damage to critical infrastructure from man-made and natural disasters.
This team is currently collaborating with Smart Machines of Texas, on a Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project, to design a multi-layer inference approach for distributed, multi-modal sensor networks that minimizes data exfiltration requirements and supports in-situ learning to adapt inference parameters.
The Geospatial Defense Intelligence (GDI) team of CDHS scholars will focus its research on the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information that describe, assess and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth for planning, decision and action towards the mitigation and recovery of natural and man-made catastrophic disasters. Outcomes from such research will enhance situational awareness for the protection of critical infrastructure and improved management of incidents at Federal, State, and local and regional levels. In addition GDI research will contribute towards improved image processing and spatial analytical techniques to exploit remote sensing measurements and locational information for improved detection of specific phenomena of interest to first responders.