SOFT TARGETSConsortium to Combat Targeted Crowd Attacks
Ten universities formed a consortium to combat terrorist and criminal attacks on soft targets such as schools, hospitals, shopping malls and sports stadiums. “The challenges of keeping people safe in soft targets and crowded spaces gets more complicated every day,” said one expert.
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has appointed a consortium of 10 universities, including Rutgers University-New Brunswick, to combat terrorist and criminal attacks on soft targets such as schools, hospitals, shopping malls and sports stadiums.
The DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate will provide $3.6 million for the first year of a 10-year grant to fund the new Center of Excellence for Engineering Secure Environments from Targeted Attacks (ESE).
“The challenges of keeping people safe in soft targets and crowded spaces gets more complicated every day,” said Fred Roberts, a distinguished professor of mathematics at the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers-New Brunswick, who has been the director of CCICADA, an existing DHS Center of Excellence at Rutgers, since its launch in 2009 and is Rutgers’ principal investigator for the new center. “We are excited to take our work to the next level through a new SENTRY Center of Excellence.” The new center combines the strengths of three such DHS centers, including the Command, Control, and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis at Rutgers (CCICADA.)
“Researching and developing science and technology solutions to combat emerging threats is a top priority for DHS,” DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement. “The new Center of Excellence will provide improved access to high-quality, university-led research and education resources for the department and the broader homeland security enterprise, while at the same time training our nation’s next generation of homeland security leaders.”
Rutgers’ School of Engineering will also contribute to the new Center of Excellence as part of the Dynamic Digital Twin for Secure and Smart Civic Spaces and Real-time Crowd and Attacker Forecasting for Risk Assessment and Threat Mitigation projects.
Jie Gong, an associate professor in the School of Engineering’s Department of Civil Engineering (CEE) will serve as the principal investigator for these digital twin projects and CEE associate professor, Jing (Peter) Jin, will serve as a co-investigator.
At the new center, Rutgers investigators will advance research on real-time threat detection and mitigation, advanced sensing and risk-assessment prediction and deterrence. Project tests will be conducted in the Living Labs at Richard Weeks Hall at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and a field living lab, DataCity Smart Mobility Testing Ground funded by Middlesex County and NJDOT, utilizing an interconnected digital infrastructure and state of the art high-resolution sensing, computing, and 5G communication technologies.
