The simulations can help authorities make decisions about selecting security measures that promise the greatest benefits while minimizing unwanted effects.
Sandia has been active in helping secure airports as well. A Sandia team demonstrated a system of sensors to alert authorities of a bioaerosol attack inside an airport by testing this approach using harmless tracer gas through an empty San Francisco International Airport terminal. The team then worked with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop guidelines — now being distributed to airport authorities by the Transportation Security Administration — for minimizing human exposures during a bioterrorism incident at an airport.
Sandia has done extensive work to help the nation manage the vulnerability inherent in the thousands of miles of unprotected U.S. land and water borders.
A major Sandia study recommended a phased approach to rapidly, efficiently, and effectively enforcing and improving border security. The approach incorporates intrusion detection to boundary defenses, patrol procedures, and interior checkpoints.
Sandia operates several centers dedicated to border-security research, including the Outdoor Test Facility (OTF) designed to test sensors, communications links, display technologies, assessment methods, and other integration issues for border-monitoring applications. The work done at the OTF has led to a number of collaborative efforts supporting the DHS Science and Technology Directorate and the Border Patrol.
In San Diego, California, Sandia operates the Border Research and Technology Center (BRTC) in conjunction with the National Institute of Justice to provide technical assistance to federal, state, and local agencies involved with border security. One activity in progress at the BRTC involves developing and deploying an intelligent, secure, collaborative system to track cargo movement.
Also through the Border Technology Deployment Center, Sandia and New Mexico State University evaluate, test, and integrate commercial sensor systems, develop methodologies and train operational personnel, and deploy state-of-the-art technologies for the Santa Teresa, New Mexico, border crossing.
At the southern border, for example, Sandia supported the DHS Science & Technology Directorate and the Arizona Border Control Initiative goal of evaluating and selecting several commercial sensor systems for operational testing in 2004 with the Border Patrol in the Tucson sector. Some sensors were transitioned to operational status, leading to programs in 2006 to upgrade the sensors, such as a buried-fiber-optic system now in use along the Nogales fence.
At the northern border, Sandia provides support annually to the Integrated Border Enforcement Teams in their search for sensor systems to provide enhanced capabilities. The team consists of a number of members of the U.S. border-security community and technical representatives of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Special “I” Division.