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Local Academia Enlists in Homeland Defense Effort

Local Academia Enlists in Homeland Defense Effort

BY BRAD GRAVES

Staff Writer

The 2001 terrorist attacks put some of San Diego’s best minds to work.

At UCSD, it’s been a year of stepped-up research into homeland security.

Two big concerns call to mind a fortress. They are ways to keep structures strong, and ways to keep watch for trouble.

Consider the strategic area of Point Loma.

UCSD engineers now are working with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (Spawar) on an ambitious video system that would monitor 3.5 miles of coastline.

They call it DIVA, for Distributed Interactive Video Array. It will consist of several 360-degree video cameras.

Mohan Trivedi, a professor with the Jacobs School of Engineering, said the system would pick up area boat traffic as well as vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

As designed, the system would survey its territory automatically. If it detected suspicious activity, the cameras could pan, tilt and zoom to get more information, such as a license plate number.

Work began this summer. UCSD officials said the system could be useful for long coastlines that are difficult to patrol and therefore “vulnerable to penetration.”

The work is funded by a grant from the Office of Naval Research. A separate, $170,000 grant from the Department of Defense to Trivedi’s lab funds a face recognition software project.

As envisioned, the software will let a machine scan a video image, pick multiple faces out of a crowd, then compare those faces to mug shots in a database.

The Coronado Bridge is under surveillance in a project that includes the Jacobs School’s interim dean, Frieder Seible.

The bridge rests on giant rubber bearings, meant to help it ride through earthquakes or other disasters. A temporary network of video cameras, high-resolution still cameras and other sensors went up on a pier in the middle of the span last spring. They monitor those bearings and the area around the bridge, then send the Internet-protocol data to UCSD via a high-bandwidth radio link.

It’s a project that includes Spawar, the Coast Guard and the California Department of Transportation. One point the demonstration is trying to make: that data can serve academia and government at the same time.

The sensor data has plenty of potential, said Seible.

The military can use it to enforce the 500-foot and 300-foot perimeters around Navy ships. Other watercraft must reduce speed in the first zone and keep out of the second zone entirely.

The sensor data can also help the Coast Guard watch the shipping channel under the bridge. Caltrans, meanwhile, can use the data to study bridge traffic.

Seible and his fellow researchers are looking for more money, alternately to expand the Coronado Bridge project or to equip other pieces of the national infrastructure. Such technology could help people keep an eye on pipelines, for example.

Seible’s other work , funded in part by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency , is to protect structures from bombs or earthquakes. In the past he has wrapped columns or covered walls with carbon fiber to make them stronger.

Puzzles he faces now include how to wrap the critical areas of cable-supported bridges , like the Golden Gate Bridge , to protect them from a blast.

The research goes back years before Sept. 11, when the government undertook such research to protect its embassies, Seible said.

Tools from the war in Afghanistan could also help with domestic vigilance.

John Kosmatka, another Jacobs School professor, spoke of research into pilotless aircraft, or drones. UCSD has come up with several potential designs.

He said such aircraft could monitor oil pipelines or electrical transmission lines, keep watch over structures or determine the hot spots of fires.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the maker of the Predator spy drone, is working with Kosmatka’s lab.

UCSD academics have been working on other ways to avert terrorist attacks, or let authorities better meet them if they do happen.

Problems range from protecting the Internet to how to best use the newest wireless radio communications technology for disaster relief.

There are public policy concerns, too.

Businesses dependent on imports and exports may want to listen to Peter Cowhey with UCSD’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies.

Cowhey predicts governments may use national security as an excuse to block free trade in food, information technology, aircraft or other items.

There has been plenty to think about since the 2001 air crashes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

“The issues surrounding homeland security,” said Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, “are much broader and more complex than many of us in academia could have imagined.”

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