Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed an advanced gaming and simulation platform to help Customs and Border Protection (CBP) evaluate various technologies that could aid border security between ports of entry in the future.
The Borders High Level Model (HLM) is a tool that is aimed at “systems architecting” to help CBP develop the “right suite of technologies, operations and policies and all of these things that make up the border security system,” Jason Reinhardt, Sandia’s Borders HLM project manager, tells TR2. “This tool is really aimed at helping them explore the trade-offs in those spaces and make defensible, well informed decisions about acquisitions.”
The simulation platform will also allow the systems architects of a border security plan to “engage” Border Patrol officers and others in the field to develop requirements and better understand the challenges they face as well “provide an ability to vet the solution space that’s developed by the designers,” Reinhardt says.
The initial Borders HLM prototype was funded by CBP.
Borders HLM combines two capabilities previously developed by Sandia, Ground Truth, which is a gaming platform, and Dante, a force-on-force simulation tool. The effort also builds on a simulation project by Sandia in the mid-2000s that looked at the impact of new detection technology at the ports of entry.
On top of all that, Sandia has done analytical work for other organizations that have interests along the border, further boosting its domain expertise that it parlayed into its latest border simulation tool, Reinhardt says.
The Sandia team has been working on Borders HLM for the past eight to nine months. The simulation tool wasn’t used to help CBP develop its alternative technology plan to the Secure Border Initiative Network that the agency unveiled earlier this year. Rather it’s to help the agency make its systems architecture decisions for border security in the future.
The current version of Borders HLM depicts a 64-square mile area of the U.S. border near El Paso, Texas. The tool provides a model of the terrain to about 3-meters of satellite resolution, allowing users to see stark detail such as the arroyos “in all their gory details because we recognize that the terrain does play a significant part in detecting and interdicting [border] crossers,” Donna Djordjevich, Borders HLM principal investigator, tells TR2. “In addition to that, we do model the static towers, the fixed towers, the mobile surveillance systems, the various unattended ground sensors, and all of those things.”
Djordevich says that if Sandia had access to additional satellite imagery it could model the entire southwest border.
As to what’s next for CBP with Borders HLM, Reinhardt says this is under discussion.
“We managed to show them that this can be really powerful,” Reinhardt says of the new simulation tool.
And there are other potential customers for Borders HLM that also have an interest in border security, Reinhardt says. These include other offices in the Department of Homeland Security as well as the Defense Department, he says. So there is additional development going on with the model through other programs, he says.
The two researchers say that with additional funding, and depending on the needs of CBP and other organizations, Borders HLM could model other sensor types such as radiation detectors and airborne systems.
Sandia’s Borders HLM team has built a model that is easily “extensible” to answer other analytical questions in the future, Reinhardt says.