LRBAA 18-01 Amendment 11 20231215.pdf

2018 Long Range Broad Agency Announcement 18-01 Amendment 11

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and

Technology (S&T) Directorate

Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (LRBAA) 18-01

AMENDMENT 11

LRBAA 18-01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION LINKED TITLE

1 LRBAA INTRODUCTION

2 PROCESS OVERVIEW

3 ELIGIBILTY

4 RESEARCH TOPICS

5 PROCESS DETAIL

6 OTHER INFORMATION

7 CONTACTS

8 LRBAA ATTACHMENTS

1 LRBAA Introduction

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate announces a modernized Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (LRBAA) featuring improved communications, transparent needs, submission options, and a faster response to your submissions. The LRBAA’s purpose is to fund scientific and technical projects across a spectrum of science and engineering disciplines that significantly improves or increases a capability to the Department’s operational environment and the Homeland Security Enterprise.

DHS S&T is interested in receiving research concept materials that meet one of the following three types of research areas:

• Type I (New Technologies): Scientific study and experimentation directed towards advancing unique state-of-the-art research, technology development, and demonstration. Emphasis for this type of classification is on research and development, with technology demonstration in an operational environment

• Type II: (Unique Prototype Technologies) Includes the development of prototypes that require a proof of concept, including technology demonstrations in an operational environment

• Type III: (Advance State of the Art Technology Improvements) Increases scientific discovery or improvements in technology, materials, processes, methods, devices or techniques. Includes technology demonstration in an operational environment

LRBAA awards may consist of basic and applied research contracts, grants, cooperative agreements and/or other transactions agreements, to include technology development and demonstration. This LRBAA will NOT pursue the following solutions:

• Technical, engineering, or other types of support services, inclusive of “contracting”-type services

• Evaluation of another contractor’s performance/program

• Research consortia, association, partnership or a combination, as of businesses or investors, for the purpose of engaging in a joint research and development venture for a particular purpose

• Mature products

• Development of a specific system or hardware solution.

The DHS S&T LRBAA 18-01 is a five (5) year announcement and will remain open until February 29, 2024, 11:59PM, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). This announcement may also contain topics with a limited open submission period. As of September 30, 2021, Industry Engagement materials are to be submitted via the DHS S&T Office of Industry Partnerships (OIP) portal and are due by February 29, 2024, 11:59PM, EDT or as indicated in this announcement in order to be further considered for an invitation to participate in the LRBAA’s Phase I-Virtual Pitch and Phase II- Written Proposal. Please be advised that the response dates associated with Phase I-Virtual Pitch and Phase II- Written Proposal will be the date specified in the notification letter provided to you and not the LRBAA completion date of February 29, 2024, 11:59PM, EDT, referenced above.

Technical and cost proposal (or any other material) development costs will not be reimbursed.

Technical and cost proposals (or any other material) submitted in response to this LRBAA will not be returned. However, depending on the markings on the materials, DHS S&T will adhere to FAR policy on handling source selection and proprietary information. It is the policy of DHS S&T to treat all materials as proprietary information and to disclose their contents only for the purposes of evaluation.

Please note only unclassified materials may be submitted. Classified information must not be transmitted.

Awards under the LRBAA will depend on the quality of proposals received and the availability of funds. The Government reserves the right to select all, some, one or none of the invited proposals received, and/or to accept proposals in their entirety or to select only portions of proposals for award. The Government reserves the right to award without exchanges or discussions. Award decisions will result from a scientific and best value determination as further detailed in this announcement. Awards may take the form of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) –based contracts; or grants, cooperative agreements, Other Transaction Agreements (OTA), or interagency agreements to appropriate parties should the situation warrant.

The applicable laws and regulations governing a particular award will depend on the selected award type as referenced in the previous paragraph. DHS S&T will also facilitate access to laboratory and operationally relevant test and evaluation facilities where reasonably available. In the event that an Offeror or Offeror’s subcontractor is a Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC), Department of Energy National Laboratory, or other federal entity, DHS S&T will work with the appropriate sponsoring agency to issue an interagency agreement pursuant to the Economy Act (31 USC 1531) or other appropriate authority. In many cases, other elements of the U.S. Government are pursuing related technologies. In such cases, S&T will leverage those technology development efforts wherever it is practicable and efficient to do so.

DHS S&T OIP portal: https://baa.dhs.gov/baa/public https://baa.dhs.gov/baa/public

2 Process Overview

The LRBAA begins with an Industry Engagement period. During the Industry Engagement period, Scientific/Component Subject Matter Experts (SME) and Program Managers (PM) evaluate submissions to the DHS S&T OIP portal from interested sources in the scientific and industrial community in order to identify a broad range of qualified offerors. Qualified offerors may be invited by a Topic Manager (TM) to participate in the two-phase proposal process consisting of a Phase I-Virtual Pitch and a Phase II-Written Proposal. Submission requirements and details are further outlined in this announcement.

A Phase I-Virtual Pitch proposal will not be accepted from any Offeror that has not been invited to submit. Offerors that submit to and participate in the Phase I Proposal-Virtual Pitch may be invited by a Topic Manager to participate in the Phase II-Written Proposal. Unique proposals submitted to the Phase I-Virtual Pitch that meet high priority technology requirements but exceed available funding may not be immediately invited to submit a Phase II-Written Proposal. Phase II- Written Proposals will not be accepted from an Offeror that has not been invited to submit.

The below chart maps the DHS S&T LRBAA process from the initial submission to award. The three primary submission and evaluation processes are indicated in orange and contain hyperlinks to submission, evaluation and administrative details. (Also see Section 5)

Long Range Broad Agency Announcement Process Flow Chart

Submission and Evaluation Timeframes

The following timeframes have been established for the LRBAA submission and evaluation process. Offerors should allow 2-5 days at the end of each assessment or evaluation period for administrative processing and notification. In some instances, the assessment or evaluation period may be extended due to the availability of subject matter personnel required for the Peer Review Panel. DHS S&T Topic Managers will work closely with offerors to keep them informed of their submission and assessment status.

Process Timeframe

Industry Engagement Assessment Response and follow-up by S&T within 10 Days

Part I-Virtual Pitch presentation material Must be submitted to the DHS S&T OIP portal within 14 Days of written notification

Part I-Virtual Pitch and Evaluation Scheduled within 21 Days of the presentation material’s due date

Part II-Written Proposal Must be submitted to the DHS S&T OIP portal within 45 days of written notification

Part II-Written Proposal Evaluation Completed by S&T within 21 days of the written proposals due date

NOTE: The Government may obtain support from both Federal Subject Matter Experts (SME) and support contractors when completing LRBAA proposal evaluations. Support contractors may be used to provide administrative assistance to federal employees who are involved in the evaluation of full proposals. Administrative assistance would include tracking the proposals through the review process and assigning proposals by system assigned number or proposal title.

Support contractors will have limited system access which does not include the capability to read or review proposals. As the activities typically carried out under the LRBAA do not involve advisory and assistance services (A&AS) contractors evaluating or analyzing proposals, the limitation in FAR 37.203(d) will not apply. If the conflict described in FAR 9.505-4 is found to exist, S&T will ensure that the contractors conclude the necessary agreements, which are kept on file, before proprietary information is shared.

3 Eligibility

All responsible sources are eligible to submit Industry Engagement materials under this LRBAA.

Foreign or foreign-owned sources are advised that their participation is subject to foreign disclosure review procedures, applicable export control laws, and other applicable federal laws, regulations, and policies pertaining to U.S. Government business with foreign entities. Potential sources may include independent organizations, single entities, or teams from private sector organizations, Government laboratories, airport authorities, FFRDCs, and academic institutions.

FFRDCs, including the Department of Energy National Laboratories and Centers, are eligible to respond to this LRBAA individually or as team members with eligible principal sources, as long as they are permitted to respond to such announcements under their applicable sponsoring agreements.

DHS S&T particularly encourages submissions from small businesses. However, no set aside of any kind will be made. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Minority Institutions (MIs), small businesses, small disadvantaged businesses, women-owned small businesses, service-disabled veteran owned small businesses, and HUBZone small businesses are encouraged to participate in the process and to join other entities as team members.

4 Research Topics

Protecting our nation can be complex – from rapidly evolving threats to longer-term efforts that require our attention. To fully understand the needs of our operational components, DHS S&T and Components routinely identify priority needs that require R&D solutions. The current six key mission areas are:

Managing Incidents Preventing Terrorism Protecting from Terrorist Attacks Securing Aviation Securing Borders Securing Cyberspace

These priority needs drive DHS’s R&D investments. DHS S&T and Components look for the following types of solutions:

1. Over the horizon, future innovations that will transform the way homeland security operators accomplish their missions.

2. Near-term capabilities that will solve current operational challenges and meet the Department’s R&D needs.

3. New applications of technologies to respond to emerging threats to the homeland.

For more information about how DHS compiles these needs, visit our website at https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/our-needs and https://www.dhs.gov/publication/working-industry-find-technology-solutions to download our DHS S&T Industry Guide that lays out DHS technology needs and describes S&T’s technical focus areas in further detail.

Learn more about the Department’s research challenge areas, specific to S&T’s LRBAA topics, and how to use the LRBAA to work with S&T by viewing our videos from the LRBAA Today webinar series (https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/lrbaa-today-webinar-series).

(Note: Additional details for each topic listed below can be found on the DHS S&T OIP portal located at https://baa.dhs.gov/baa/public) https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/our-needs https://www.dhs.gov/publication/working-industry-find-technology-solutions https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/lrbaa-today-webinar-series https://baa.dhs.gov/baa/public

MANAGING INCIDENTS (MGMT)

Incident Management encompasses emergency response and critical infrastructure security and resilience, to include the preparedness, response, and recovery needs of more than 70,000 state, local, tribal, and federal agencies and 16 critical infrastructure sectors.

Priority R&D needs and topics in support of incident management needs are centered on the following priorities:

Situational Awareness (01) MGMT 01-02: Technology Acceptance

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

Understanding the way in which individual and organizational factors influence technology adoption is critical for determining how to avoid organizational barriers to technology transition and implementation.

1. Enhance understanding of workforce acceptance of new technology

2. Enhance understanding of public perceptions of new technology

3. Develop strategic communications plans for the implementation and dissemination of new technology

4. Support operational experiments and exercises to improve technology adoption

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type I

TRL SOUGHT: 4-7 TRL at CONCLUSION: 8-9

END OBJECTIVE:

DHS S&T seeks to improve adoption of new technologies to improve national security. Because the selection and adoption of new technologies often requires a substantial investment of organizational time and resources, ensuring that the technology can be successfully embedded within the organization’s structure and culture and used efficiently and effectively by employees remains an important priority. This research will increase the understanding of how organizations operate and interact both internally and with constituents that leads to transition a technology into the organizational context.

Communications (02) MGMT 02-08: GMD and Nuclear EMP Critical Infrastructure Risk

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

High altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP), or a naturally occurring geomagnetic disturbance (GMD, also referred to as "space weather") events have the potential to disrupt or permanently damage electrical components and systems within the critical infrastructure sectors (e.g., industrial control systems, large power transformers, network routers, traffic controllers, and radio receivers/transmitters) and large-scale infrastructure (e.g., the electric power grid, communication networks, satellite networks and interstate pipelines).

DHS Science and Technology (S&T) goal is to improve our understanding of the effects of EMP/GMD events on communications infrastructure (and other critical infrastructure) and drive research activities to provide practical, data-driven, specific, and actionable information, concepts, techniques, technologies, and tools to critical infrastructure owners and operators to implement to protect their current and future communication systems from the impacts of an EMP event.

S&T desires modeling, simulations, and assessments; testing and validation; and mitigation research and development (R&D) projects that use such capabilities and tools to advance industry’s understanding of potential adverse impacts (and ways to mitigate or protect against such potential negative consequences) from EMP and GMD events and support the following R&D initiatives:

1. EMP Vulnerability Assessment of a private 4G LTE Network and 5G cellular systems

2. EMP/GMD Legacy Standards Review, Assessment and Update

3. Vulnerability Assessment of Critical Communication Systems and Emergency Operation

Centers

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type I

TRL SOUGHT: 2 TRL AT CONCLUSION: 5

END OBJECTIVE:

Any or all of the following:

• Threat and Hazard Modeling–Severe geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) and nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) are large-scale, high-impact, low- frequency (HILF) events where we have limited historical data and experience. The lack of experience creates a heavy reliance on models and simulations of these events to guide the protection of critical infrastructure (CI) and to estimate post-event responses for recovery and restoration.

• Mapping of National Critical Functions to Critical Infrastructure Networks– National Critical Functions (NCF) provide a high-level definition of functions that need to be sustained to avoid serious disruption to national security and safety and economic activity.

• Identification of Key Critical Infrastructure Assets and Vulnerability Assessments– The CI networks that support the NCFs are composed of many subsystems, devices and components.

• Prediction of Critical Infrastructure Network Performance Under Extreme Conditions– The CI networks that support the NCFs often exhibit complex behavior governed by physics, control systems, and human operator intervention.

• Design of Critical Infrastructure Network Vulnerability Mitigations to Ensure NCF Performance—Resources for hardening or sparing CI network subsystems, devices and components are often limited, and the effect of these mitigations on the CI network, especially as it pertains to NCF PEMP, are often not straightforward due to complex network behavior.

• Modeling and simulation incorporating the coupling effects of EMP/GMD events (E1, E2 and E3) to key critical infrastructure subcomponents, components, and systems, to determine impacts to these systems and inform potential vulnerabilities as well as mitigations

• Assessment of the vulnerability of key and/or commonly used critical infrastructure subcomponents, components, systems to EMP/GMD through testing of those elements

• Evaluation of mitigation techniques or technologies to reduce the impact of EMP/GMD events on key and/or commonly use critical infrastructure subcomponents, components, or systems (through modeling & simulation and/or testing)

Command, Control, Communications (03) No current topics

Training and Exercises (04)

Responder Health, Safety, Performance (05)

Logistics and Resource Management (06)

Casualty Management (07)

Risk Assessment and Planning (08) MGMT 08-04: Using Internet of Things (IoT) for Community and Infrastructure Resiliency Against All-Hazards

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

S&T performs research through computational and engineering sciences to development new, existing and evolving sensors and control system architectures to enhance detection and monitoring capabilities to enhance risk assessment and planning, prevention, mitigation, and response efforts.

Operational challenges for advancing resilient communities and infrastructure from all hazards include:

• detection of disruptions and events

• monitoring and situational awareness

• in order to improve alerts, warnings and notification and protect facilities and critical infrastructure, populations, networks, architectures and control systems from existing, new and emerging threats

S&T identifies, develops, integrates, enhances and delivers technologies, tools, techniques, solution architectures and next-generation capabilities using Internet of Things (IoT) to safely defend and secure Smart Cities, communities and critical infrastructure for a resilient nation against All-Hazards - natural, technological and human-made. Risks to community resilience result from a variety of stresses and shocks such as climate change, natural hazards, extreme weather, viral pathogens, disruptions or threat to energy generation or power consumption.

Human-made risks can take many forms in terms of physical threats and incidents including soft targets, chemical/biological or extremism. Technological risks may occur in the form of cyber, malware and supply chain disruption or digital disruptions. All these hazards require new and enhanced detection, mitigation, prevention and response capabilities for use by public, private and government equities with responsibilities to better enable physical systems, assets or key functions to strengthen and ensure community resilience.

IoT technologies and the platforms they operate with, may be designed, developed, integrated and repurposed to deliver new or enhanced capabilities in support of resilient communities. Some examples of priority R&D technologies for enabling resilient communities and mitigating natural, technological, or human-made risks to be considered in this topic may include (but not limited to) any or all of the following:

• Sensor technologies to enhance detection and monitoring:

o In-door and out-door sensors o environmental and multi-hazard detection sensors o Industrial Control Systems, Building Information and Automation Systems o Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition systems o Chem/Bio detection sensors; active shooter detection and response technologies;

building energy efficiency sensors

• Computational data and technologies to enable analytical processing of IoT sensor data:

o AI/ML for sensor edge computing o computational fluid dynamics o Building Information and Automation Systems o 3D Digital twin and augmented reality technology o building and information management automated systems, occupancy and crowd counting technologies

• IoT sensor cyber vulnerability technologies:

o Edge computing and transmission o Post Quantum cyber mechanics o Zero Trust Architecture

• Information Sharing to securely manage the aggregation, distribution, and sharing of the data streams produced by:

o AI/ML and machine-to-machine analytics

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type I, Type II

TRL SOUGHT: 3 TRL AT CONCLUSION: 7

END OBJECTIVE:

Applied research and development for IoT Sensors for community and infrastructure resiliency against All-Hazards. The resulting research will advance the transfer of Sensors and Platform technologies to enhance the mission capability of the DHS Component and the extended Homeland Security Enterprise stakeholders. Outcomes must provide interoperable solutions for operational test and evaluation, quantifiable impact and commercial viability. Technology development may include phased development (e.g., proof-of-concept, prototype, Alpha, Beta and pre-production for commercial release and transfer) to verify functional capability, mature technology and provide operational deployment for test and evaluation by DHS Components and stakeholders prior to transition and/or commercialization.

DHS has a need to support Components and stakeholders to promote secure, safe and resilient communities and infrastructure. To achieve those objectives, DHS requires advanced technical support services across a wide spectrum of capabilities. The task will include the evaluation, design, development and prototyping of sensor detection, response, mitigation, prevention and management technologies, tools, solution architectures and next-generation capabilities using Internet of Things (IoT) to safely defend and secure Smart Cities, communities and critical infrastructure for a resilient nation against All-Hazards.

DHS will leverage public-private partnerships to identify candidate innovative technology solutions, which are developed with the partners and transitioned into DHS Components and stakeholders including commercialization into the marketplace for continuity of commerce and industry growth.

MGMT 08-05: Integrating risk sciences and adaptive engineering for community and infrastructure resilience

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

S&T performs research in risk sciences, regenerative technologies and adaptive engineering to mitigate current or emerging threats and hazards to enhance disaster preparedness and resilience of the Nation's communities and infrastructure. This research supports an integrated approach to new and emerging operational challenges (i.e. increasing frequency and scale of disruptions and catastrophic events, inability to adapt to future conditions, complications of aging infrastructure, extensive maintenance and interdependencies as well as demographic, economic development and technological innovation pressures) posed by the threats and consequences from climate change, environmental degradation, extreme weather events, and other interactions between human and earth systems that impact the Department's missions.

S&T identifies, develops, integrates, enhances and delivers technologies, tools, techniques, solutions and next generation capabilities to increase the safety and resilience of communities and infrastructure against all-hazards. All these hazards require new and enhanced preparedness, adaptation, mitigation, prevention and response, and functional recovery capabilities for use by public, private and government equities with responsibilities to better enable physical systems, assets or key functions to strengthen and ensure community and infrastructure resilience.

Risk sciences, regenerative technologies and adaptive engineering practices may be designed, developed, integrated or re-purposed to deliver new or enhanced capabilities in support of resilient communities and infrastructure across community lifelines and infrastructure sectors (i.e.

water/wastewater infrastructure, energy, etc. such as in the case of dam safety. Some examples of priority R&D to be considered in this topic will include any or all of the following:

• self-healing and regenerative technologies

• risk assessment and planning technologies

• disaster proofing technologies and interventions

• adaptive risk management and diagnostic technologies

• geophysical and geoengineering technologies

TRL SOUGHT: 2 TRL AT CONCLUSION: 6

END OBJECTIVE:

Applied research and development to transfer the advancements in community and infrastructure resilience technologies to enhance the mission capability of the DHS Component and the extended Homeland Security Enterprise. Novel, interoperable solutions with operational value to advance to commercial viability.

MGMT 08-06: Maritime Environment and Climate and Coastal, Port, and Waterway Security

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

The Maritime Environment and Climate and Coastal, Port, and Waterway Security develops and transitions technology to protect waterways, ports, and maritime borders. Monitoring and ensuring the health of U.S. environment, coastal lines, and inland waterways ensures that maritime commerce flows freely and interdicts illegal activities attempting to utilize the maritime environment. These technologies will assist with various aspects of waterway management including maintaining infrastructure, monitoring waterway conditions, maintaining aids to navigation, ensuring free flow of commercial goods, identifying and efficiently responding to oil spills, developing alternatives to fossil fuels, offshore windfarms, disabling maritime threats, countering unmanned systems, identifying and boarding non-compliant vessels, etc.

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type II, Type III

TRL SOUGHT: 4 TRL AT CONCLUSION: 7

END OBJECTIVE:

Keep U.S. waters safe, healthy, and efficient for travel, trade, and commerce while preventing criminal activities. At project completion, technologies will DHS component customers to be utilized to monitor security and health of ports, coast, and waterways and secure infrastructure and health of these environments.

MGMT 08-07: Laboratory Research to Characterize Agricultural Threat Agents

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

Agriculture is recognized as an important part of U.S. critical infrastructure. In addition to providing abundant food and sustenance to the population, the U.S. food & agriculture sector contributes significantly to U.S. employment, the economy and a positive trade impact. Threats to food and agriculture can come from natural, accidental, or intentional means. Some agricultural threats represent a shared threat to both human health and to agriculture.

Scientific characterization of these threats helps inform decisions and assists in guiding efforts to prevent, protect, detect, mitigate, and recover from biological agricultural hazards.

Proposals to characterize agricultural threat agents should be especially with respect to environmental stability, stability and persistence in agricultural environments, facilities and media (carcasses, manure, feed, meat, by products, effluent). The results will inform prevention, protection, detection, mitigation and recovery with respect to policy, preparation, response, resource allocation and purchasing. The data acquired will also be used to create or improve risk analysis models and tools.

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type II

TRL SOUGHT: 5 TRL AT CONCLUSION: 8

END OBJECTIVE:

Identify or inform response and mitigation methods with respect to depopulation, decontamination, disinfection and carcass disposal, contaminated products or effluents.

Identify and develop practical, field deployable tools, technologies and products to enable efficient and scalable response, and to reduce further dissemination and spread of pathogens during response, control or mitigation efforts. Provide conceptual design and working prototypes, for tools, technologies or solutions that are flexible, cross cutting, mobile, capable of high volume or pace, and can operate in ambient conditions across the U.S.

Intelligence and Investigation (09) MGMT 09-01: Forensics and Criminal Investigations

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) diverse mission set includes countering terrorism and homeland security threats, securing borders and approaches to the United States, securing cyberspace and critical infrastructure, and preserving and upholding the nations prosperity and economic security. Criminal actors across the globe attempt to compromise the Nation's financial systems; commit cybercrimes; attack critical infrastructure; smuggle drugs, weapons, contraband, people, and counterfeit goods in to and out of the United States; and exploit children and other vulnerable populations.

The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Forensics and Criminal Investigations Program (henceforth referred to as the Program) aims to strengthen DHS and other law enforcement partners through the identification, development, evaluation, and transition of technology targeted at improving the ability to collect, preserve, process, analyze, and share information to investigate and prosecute criminal actors.

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type I, Type II, Type III

TRL SOUGHT: 3 TRL AT CONCLUSION: 7

END OBJECTIVE:

The objectives of the Program are to enhance DHS Components with forensics and criminal investigation capabilities. The Program aims to identify, develop, test & evaluate, and transition technology to:

• Recognize, preserve, collect, analyze, store, and share crime scene evidence with enhanced capabilities for faster, more accurate, and less error-prone comparisons with advanced tools, techniques, training, and systems that emphasize automation and human factors

• Recognize, preserve, collect/extract, analyze, store, and share digital evidence with enhanced capabilities for full system/device access using faster, automated, and more accessible tools, techniques, training, and systems

• Increase the capacity of DHS investigators to rapidly adjudicate and correlate evidence across DHS investigations

• Enhance DHS's technical investigation capabilities

• Improved training and curricula to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement

PREVENTING TERRORISM (PREV)

A hallmark of homeland security, the prevention of terrorist attacks runs through the mission of every component within DHS. Terrorist tactics continue to evolve and the threat of terrorism has become increasingly difficult to detect.

Priority R&D needs and topics in preventing terrorism are:

Organic Explosive Compound and Homemade Explosives Detection (01) PREV 01-02: Detection Canine Technologies

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

Detection Canine's development interests are focused on three areas:

1. Canine R&D Structure and Function - understanding of canine behavior, genetics, olfaction, and cognition to improve operational efficiencies and training methods.

2. Development and Testing of Canine Training Aids - targeting the creation of low cost, non- hazardous emerging threat and conventional explosive training aids, with state-of-the-art laboratory technology for odor validation to the level of canine detection and odor generalization analysis studies to reduce requisite numbers of trained odors.

• Revisiting and further evaluating explosives detection canine generalization capability. This includes focusing on three areas: (1) "canine factors," (2) "contaminated" explosives vs "clean" training aids, (3) and the number of training aids required for ideal generalization.1

3. Independent Operational Test and Evaluation - technologies and methodologies that advance detection canine performance in controlled and operational environments representative of the Homeland Security Enterprise at the federal, state, and local level, that facilitate scientifically significant data capture through independent operational test and evaluation.

(1) The canine factors area is similar to human factors in which the time between training aid exposures, number of blanks, impact on performance of hits in training scenarios versus operational scenarios, and target density are evaluated.

(2) Evaluation of contaminated explosives versus clean training aids focuses on the crux of canine generalization, is there a point (or range) at which the canine no longer detects the explosive due to contamination. Unlike traditional definition, in this sense, contamination is any compound (wrappings, fuels, shrapnel, etc.) that imparts an odor on the bomb.

(3) The last area is an optimization of the number of training aids with a similar base explosive required for the canine to generalize to potential finds in operations. Historical generalization work has shown that training on a single compound is insufficient for proper generalization, but research into determining the ideal number of training aids for generalization has not been completed.

TRL SOUGHT: 4 TRL at CONCLUSION: 7

END OBJECTIVE:

Provide greater insight to detection canine's capabilities through sound scientific evaluation of training and deployment. By conducting research in the above areas, optimizations in training can be discovered and employed to augment DHS components detection canine programs for improved detection efficiency and effectiveness.

• The goal of canine factors is to produce scientifically validated guidance to improve the detection canine capability.

• The goal of the contaminated versus clean area is to determine if there is a point or range in which the detection canine will no longer detect the explosive having only been exposed to their training aid inventory. Once this point or range is known, a follow-on would be to determine how to mitigate this point.

• The goal of the optimization of the number of training aids for generalization is to provide guidance on the minimum number of different forms of the same base explosive to have a canine that can detect any range of explosives they would be exposed to in an operational setting.

The canine factors area is similar to human factors in which the time between training aid exposures, number of blanks, impact on performance of hits in training scenarios versus operational scenarios, and target density are evaluated. Evaluation of contaminated explosives versus clean training aids focuses on the crux of canine generalization, is there a point (or range) at which the canine no longer detects the explosive due to contamination. Unlike traditional definition, in this sense, contamination is any compound (wrappings, fuels, shrapnel, etc.) that imparts an odor on the bomb. The last area is an optimization of the number of training aids with a similar base explosive required for the canine to generalize to potential finds in operations.

Historical generalization work has shown that training on a single compound is insufficient for proper generalization, but research into determining the ideal number of training aids for generalization has not been completed.

Improvised Explosive Device-related Anomaly Detection (02)

Automated Machine Learning (03) PREV 03-01: Trustworthy and Responsible Artificial Intelligence

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

The research and development of creating or enhancing technologies to enable DHS to-effectively assess the performance of AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence / Machine learning) systems against technical and mission metrics, provide operators making critical decisions an appropriate level of trust and confidence, inspire trust in the general public towards AI/ML systems deployed by DHS. Areas of interest include: develop methods, processes and technologies for explainable AI for mapping AI and ML decision process reasoning to human-understandable terms; develop risk analysis framework for malicious or unintentional misuse, accidents, or other errors and failures of AI technology; identifying and managing bias in AI; develop methods for AI robustness, including techniques such as uncertainty quantification for AI and ML applications, GANS (Generative Adversarial Networks), robust control techniques, etc.

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type I

TRL SOUGHT: 3 TRL at CONCLUSION: 3

END OBJECTIVE:

Applied research and development for establishing some parameters for consideration of explainability, including discussion about the tradeoffs between performance and explainability;

study of risk evaluation of AI/ML, with focus on their impact on specific DHS use cases;

development of recommendations for best practice for reducing AI/ML risk associated with use case important for DHS components operations.

Prevention (04) PREV 04-03: Threat Prevention

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

The ability to prevent public safety threats and malign actors through the application of social science methods can include:

1. Research and development to improve the detection, analysis, understanding, and mitigation of the threats posed by terrorism and targeted violence, human trafficking, child exploitation and online disinformation

2. Knowledge, tools and technologies to determine when individuals, groups, and movements are likely to engage in violence or illegal activity

3. What ideological, organizational, and contextual factors may influence acts of violence, illegal activity, the spread of online disinformation, and target selection.

4. How to build community resilience to public safety threats.

TRL SOUGHT: 4-7 TRL at CONCLUSION: 8-9

DHS S&T seeks to ensure rigorous, high-quality data to understand the nature of threats in the United States; provide independent, objective assessment of activities to ensure that DHS can continually improve and understand the outcomes, impacts, and unintended consequences of investments in threat prevention; and ensure the most up-to-date scientific information from around the world is readily available to DHS and DHS enterprise decision-makers for science-informed policy and practice.

Advanced Analytics (05)

PROTECTING FROM TERRORIST ATTACKS (PROT)

Protecting the American people from terrorist threats and attacks is the reason DHS was created and remains our highest priority. Terrorists seek sophisticated means of attack, including chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) weapons, and cyber-attacks.

Biological threat security, in particular, focuses around the prevention of release as well as detection of and protection against biological threats and hazards known to pose particularly high risk to the nation.

Priority R&D needs and topics are:

Personal Protective Equipment for all CBRNE Hazards (01)

Modeling and Predictive Analytics for Decision Making (02) PROT 02-02: Advanced and Emerging Data Computation and Analytics

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

This topic focuses on novel computational and analytic methods and capabilities for large-scale data sets for DHS missions. DHS must keep pace with rapidly evolving and emerging computing techniques and environments by experimenting with growing data sets and next generation technologies, including real-time analytics, privacy enhancing technologies such as secure multi-party computation, high performance computing, edge computing, blockchain, and cloud environments to inform program planning, avoid technical obsolescence, accelerate transition, and prevent mission surprise. S&T research addresses scaling automation and computation for efficient, timely analytics and methods and tools that increase mission effectiveness with security and privacy built-in. Beyond technology, the research includes understanding how humans make decisions using technology, tasks humans can/should do rather than machines, new methods for validating analytics for reliability and trustworthiness in operations, bias in data, and other factors that are important considerations in applying data analytics successfully in operations.

Future Computing Architectures: Research and evaluation on data storage and infrastructure to improve real-time, efficient computation with built-in privacy and security.

Media and Augmented Analytics: Interdisciplinary research that develops methods and evaluates and applies advanced/emerging capabilities to leverage public, government, and commercial data sets. Media refers to both text and binary data types. Augmented analytics are capabilities that aid human decision making.

Analytic Concepts and Capabilities: Exploration of capabilities and concepts that have yet to be well-defined or matured for DHS. Past examples of work in this area include game theory applications for airport screening, model drift and bias detection, and others.

Particular interests near-term: digital twins for critical-infrastructure applications; new capabilities in privacy enhancing computations that are scalable to DHS operations; analytic solutions for cybersecurity, including mobile device, increasing quality of synthetic data images for machine learning in high consequence decision-making.

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type I, Type II, Type III

TRL SOUGHT: 3 TRL at CONCLUSION: 7

END OBJECTIVE:

Deliver methods and capabilities that increase DHS's ability to leverage data sets to increase mission effectiveness and efficiency.

Disease and Biological Threat Detection, Identification, and Classification in Field Operational Environments (03) PROT 03-04: Research, Testing and Evaluation of Food, Agriculture and Veterinary Defense Prototype Countermeasure Tools to Increase Resiliency Against High Consequence Domestic Terrestrial Animal Disease Events

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

Leveraging recent advancements in human-focused countermeasure technologies and product solutions (i.e., vaccines, pathogen detection systems and point of care diagnostics) for SARS- CoV-2 and other emerging domestic animal diseases - research, develop, test and evaluate innovative, food, agriculture, and veterinary medical countermeasure prototype resiliency tools and technologies for high consequence domestic, terrestrial animal (livestock, poultry) infectious diseases.

Provide working prototypes for testing and evaluation for fitness for purpose by qualified academic, government and private sector/industry laboratories.

Propose flexible pathogen-specific and pathogen-agnostic approaches to address food, agricultural and veterinary biodefense challenges. Approaches that align with a One Health approach are preferred.

Responders are strongly encouraged to provide project candidates that include industry and stakeholder involvement and meet appropriate food, agriculture and veterinary federal requirements (regulatory, support defense of critical infrastructure, etc.).

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type II

TRL SOUGHT: 5 TRL at CONCLUSION: 8

Provide forward looking RDT&E countermeasure solutions and/or product candidates for transition to industry partners for commercialization, for the control, recovery and prevention of high consequence events directly impacting domestic, terrestrial animals (livestock, poultry) across the entire production cycle (farm to fork, farm to fiber, etc.).

Perform pathogen-agnostic vaccine and/or therapeutic RDT&E for transboundary and novel high consequence domestic, terrestrial animal infectious disease viral pathogens.

Conduct RDT&E of devices, tools, and sensors for the detection, identification, and for resiliency against biologic agents of high consequence in domestic, terrestrial animals, animal-derived food, and cargo/baggage/passenger carried animal-derived food contraband.

Conduct RDT&E of devices, tools, and sensors for the detection, identification, and resilience against domestic, terrestrial animal high consequence disease transmitting vectors in the environment.

Perform RDT&E of vaccines to enable the Food and Agriculture Sector to mitigate, recover, and increase resiliency from domestic, terrestrial animal following exposure or introduction into animal feed, animal-derived food, agricultural, and veterinary supply chains.

PROT 03-05: Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation of Food and Agriculture Defense Tools and Technologies for Countering Threats to Plant or Crop Diseases and Pests

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

DHS Food, Agriculture, and Veterinary Defense Program (FAV-D) seeks research, development, testing, and evaluation of innovative countermeasures and diagnostic tools and technologies to prevent, mitigate, and respond to emerging and existing plant pathogens and pests that affect food and feed crops in the U.S. food and agriculture sector. We are seeking technologies which are fieldable, easy to use, and deliver acute and timely results.

Other desirable approaches:

(1) Consider ecosystem and environmental impact on detection and mitigation protocols against pathogens and pests.

(2) Environmental impact on tools and technologies should also be taken into consideration.

(3) Inter-disciplinary team approach to achieve successful and broad outcomes, effectiveness and efficiency is encouraged.

(4) Flexibility to apply across a variety of plants/crops is of interest.

(5) Foster and build involvement of industry, universities/institutions of higher learning, state and federal organizations and other relevant stakeholders.

END OBJECTIVE:

Provide forward-looking RDT&E solutions to enhance protection and recovery from catastrophic threats across the entire food and agriculture defense continuum. This includes natural, accidental, or intentional introduction of a pathogen or pest attack on the food and agricultural sector.

Identify techniques that target the pathogenicity, transmission, dissemination of, and methods for detecting pathogens with potential to infect and cause significant damage to plant and/or major crops in the United States.

Develop and evaluate additional threats of concern, including synthetic biological threats due to natural or intentional introduction into the U.S. food and agriculture system.

Support novel technologies that simultaneously detect and identify multiple diseases or pests to aid in activating appropriate rapid response and countermeasures to the threats.

Conduct RDT&E to enhance rapid detection and identification of high consequence transboundary plant pathogens and pests and ports of entry and along the food and agriculture continuum.

Biological Attack Verification (04)

SECURING AVIATION (SEC AVN)

The aviation security environment presents a constant demand to detect evolving threats while moving passengers, baggage, and cargo safely and quickly through checkpoints and promoting a positive passenger experience. The end goal is to provide non-invasive security screening at our nation’s airports while preventing terrorist attacks and ensuring speedy and lawful trade and travel.

Priority R&D needs and topics for securing aviation are:

High-Throughput Cargo Screening (01)

Cost-effective Electronic Imaging for Bulk Air Cargo (02)

Passenger Identification and Vetting (03)

Rapid Detection and Alarming of Explosives (04)

Distinguishing Threats from Non-threats on Passengers (05) SEC AVN 05-02: Screening at Speed

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

Screening at Speed seeks to mature transformative technologies that increase aviation security effectiveness from curb-to-gate while dramatically reducing wait times and improving passenger experiences.

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type II

TRL SOUGHT: 3 TRL at CONCLUSION: 6

END OBJECTIVE:

Prototype solution(s) capable of improving the security, throughput, and/or passenger experience at the airport checkpoint or similar environments. Capabilities of particular interest include accessible property (carry-on baggage) screening systems, components, and algorithms; on-person screening systems, components, and algorithms; curb- to-gate screening capabilities and integration architectures; cyber secure architecture and capabilities; and passenger facing technologies to improve the overall user experience.

Efficient and Accurate Detection of Complex Threat Concealment on Passengers and Carried Property (06) SEC AVN 06-06: Development of Tools for Test and Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms

TOPIC DESCRIPTION:

S&T seeks development of cost-effective methodologies and tools for training and testing of machine learning based (ML-based) algorithms for detecting explosives and contraband in CT and millimeter wave (MMW) images. This includes methods to synthesize training and testing data, methods to perturb empirical data in order to explore and explain algorithm performance characteristics, and tools to assess the completeness and diversity of training and test data sets.

Methods and tools should be capable of acting upon CT x-ray images or images produced by current or emerging MMW passenger inspection systems. (A small number of such images will be provided on request.)

TOPIC RESEARCH SOUGHT: Type I, Type II

TRL SOUGHT: 3 TRL at CONCLUSION: 6

END OBJECTIVE:

Develop user-friendly software tools for verifying ML-based algorithms for explosives and contraband detection. These tools should allow the user (tester) to explore potential vulnerabilities of the ML-based algorithm with regard to threat features, concealment features, or sensor degradation (system noise).

SECURING BORDERS (SEC BORD)

Our borders are vital economic gateways that account for trillions of dollars in trade and travel each year.