DHS COE for Command, Control and Interoperability

In yesterday’s Federal Register DHS announced the designation of two lead institutions for the DHS Center of Excellence (COE) for Command, Control and Interoperability. DHS designated Purdue University as Visualization Sciences and Education Lead Institution and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, as Data Sciences Lead Institution. DHS noted that “This team of institutions is uniquely well qualified and located to address data analysis, visualization, cyber security and other related issues”. The purpose of this Center of Excellence was explained in the Federal Register notices.

“This COE will conduct fundamental research into the technological issues, challenges, and policy issues related to (1) dynamic, on-demand data processing and visualization; (2) hypothesis-driven data analysis; (3) visualization of structured, unstructured, and streaming data; (4) mathematics of discrete and visual analytics; (5) scalable information filtering and dissemination; (6) visualization and simulation of information; (7) mobile and light-weight information analytics and sharing. This COE will create the scientific basis and enduring technologies needed to analyze massive amounts of information from multiple sources to more reliably detect threats to the security of the nation and its infrastructures, and to the health and welfare of its populace. These new technologies will also improve the dissemination of both information and related technologies.”

While not specifically designated to support the chemical security operations at DHS, this COE, with its data analysis and visualization and cyber security focus will probably have more of a direct impact on chemical facility and transportation security functions than the original 14 COE out-lined in Section 308 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and its subsequent amendments.