1.  Development of an Integrated Sensor System for Real-time Monitoring of Metabolites of Organophosphorus Chemical Warfare Agents, Pesticides, and E. coli in Food and Water (Dr. Yolanda Jones) -in progress

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has assigned high priority to the deterrence and prevention of terrorist acts, which threaten the security of American citizens and critical infrastructure. The focus of this project is to address this critical need by developing technology for a low cost, robust sensor system which will be deployed for three critical environments for monitoring against biological and chemical agents.

 

2.  Rapid Detection of Agriterrorism via Remote Sensing (Dr. Lori Bruce) -in progress

Interruption of the agricultural food supply could be accomplished by widespread application of airborne bio-chemical agents (ABAs) to agricultural crops. Terrorists could utilize plant pathogens or existing, commercially available herbicides and pesticides that may be safely used in some crops but which would have catastrophic effects on others. There exists a strong need for a means to rapidly and accurately detect such an event, or the lack thereof in the case of a hoax. This project includes the design, implementation, and validation of an automated target recognition (ATR) system for utilizing hyperspectral imaging (HSI) data to detect when an ABA has been applied to an agricultural crop. 

 

3.  Analysis of WMD Materials in Waste and Storm Water Treatment Infrastructures in Southeastern US Cities (R. T. Jubin, joint with Oak Ridge National Laboratory) -in progress

This effort focuses on the development of estimation tools and the required supporting data to predict the distribution and fate of a dispersed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) material (radiological, chemical, or biological agents) in wastewater and storm water treatment and handling systems of the State of Mississippi, specifically, and in general, for any Southeastern US urban environment in the 24 to 96-hour period immediately following a dispersal event. 

 

4.  Real-Time Operations Support for Emergency Evacuations (Dr. Li Zhang) -in progress

Real-time traffic information gathering and management is one of the most important aspects of emergency evacuations operations, but one where scarce practical research has been conducted. This research proposes to improve the operations during a vehicular emergency evacuation by using newly developed real-time traffic information gathering technologies to assess traffic conditions and to detect incidents on the main evacuation routes. The ultimate goal is to create a system which emergency management agencies, and/or other public safety organizations, can rapidly deploy anywhere to help manage traffic operations during emergency evacuations.

5.  Computational Tools for Water Security (Dr. S. Y. Wang) -in progress

The proposed research is to transfer the technology in the area of computational simulation of water infrastructures to DHS to strengthen its technological base for preventing, being prepared for, responding to, and planning to recover from major incidents on critical water infrastructures in general. The focus in the near-term, however, is on providing useful tools to the local homeland security personnel for them to make the best possible (compromised) decisions to meet the urgent need at the initial stages of major incidents of chemical spills in critical water infrastructures. The newly developed technologies can also be used to identify the optimal designs of new water infrastructures and/or the plans for the improvements of the existing critical water infrastructures, so that they can be less vulnerable to major hazardous incidents and better prepared for and recovered from the chemical spill incidents if they do happen.

 

6.  Real-time Detection of Chemicals and Biological Pathogens in Fluids (Dr. Gordon Cannon) -in progress

Our goal is to produce a simple-to-use, portable detector system that is able to sense in real time various pathogens and toxic chemicals that pose potential threats to both Mississippi and the nation as a result of acts of terrorism, accidental events, or acts of nature.