Port securityFSU spin-off contributes to U.S. ports protection
With 2.5 billion tons of cargo worth more than $2 trillion passing through U.S. seaports each year, the maritime transportation industry is critical to the U.S. economy, and security is a constant concern; a massive training curriculum is designed by Florida State University (FSU) researchers to promote the security of the nation’s 350 commercial ports is about to enter the marketplace.
Pulling it together was a Herculean task that took some five years to complete, but now a massive training curriculum designed by Florida State University (FSU) researchers to ensure the security of the nation’s 350 commercial ports is about to enter the marketplace.
A spin-off company, the Educational Development Group LLC (EDG), has been formed; through an agreement with the Florida State University Research Foundation, it has begun offering the security training program and its online reporting system to clients on a fee basis.
“FSU’s unusual skill in developing educational tools has earned us many challenging assignments from organizations that plan to use those tools for themselves,” said Vice President for Research Kirby Kemper. “In this effort, the FSU team was challenged to build the tools first, then find or create a business structure to deliver this critical security training. I’m proud of both the developers who have shown the courage of their convictions, and the support that my office was able to provide for their new venture.”
Florida State’s involvement with the port-security project dates back to 2005, when researchers with the university’s Center for National Security Training and Research (CNSTAR), a part of the Learning Systems Institute, signed a cooperative agreement with DHS to develop a comprehensive system for training port workers, security guards, law enforcement officers, and others. The agreement was soon followed by $6.2 million in research funding from the DHS. The department’s goal was to create a uniform, comprehensive set of courses for port employees in order more effectively to prevent, deter and respond to terrorist acts at the nation’s busy seaports — and to develop an online database that would allow ports to record and track their employees’ training histories. With 2.5 billion tons of cargo worth more than $2 trillion passing through U.S. seaports each year, the maritime transportation industry is critical to the nation’s economy, and security is a constant concern.
For much of the next four years, CNSTAR researchers, including Associate Professor Aubteen Darabi, the project leader, and Associate Professor Laura Lang, the Learning Systems Institute’s director, labored to develop the port-security curriculum and database. Working with subject-matter coordinator Fred Wilder and a team of instructional designers led by project manager Judd Butler, they produced a whole-system curriculum consisting of 530 self-contained lessons divided over eight separate courses. Taken either online or with an instructor, each individual lesson takes about thirty
