The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has released the first in series of targeted solicitations seeking concept papers for new capabilities in a range of areas to integrate screening technologies and support new operating concepts.
The first Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is soliciting concept papers focused on Explosive Detection Systems (EDS) centralization, common graphic user interface (GUI), and emulators, the agency says in a June 12 FedBizOpps.gov notice.
In follow-on BAAs, TSA says it “will seek standards-compliant platform-friendly offering that extend this architecture into each screening domain to raise the bar on performance and leverage technology with efficient lifecycle costs.” The successive BAAs will be released before the agency’s planned capital investment windows with each screening domain so that solutions have time to mature. TSA says the solution will help inform requirements development.
During 2015, additional BAAs will focus on improved X-Ray based screening capabilities at the checkpoint, ranging from enhancements of existing deployed technology to the introduction of new screening devices and their integration into screening and analytical workflows, TSA says. In 2016 the agency will begin seeking new option for body scanning and “mechanisms for enhanced trace detection.” Then in 2017 TSA will turn its attention to new checked baggage screening capabilities and “integrated alarm resolution.”
The new targeted BAA and the ones planned in the coming months and years follow other recent initiatives by TSA aimed at improving screening technologies and driving toward a future aviation checkpoint where screening is non-invasive and passengers breeze, or nearly so, through with nary an interruption.
In May the agency released a Request for Information (RFI) for new technology to screen carry-on bags. TSA later this month will host an Industry Day related to the RFI, which is focused on 3-D Volumetric Tomosynthesis technology to enable next-generation X-Ray screeners to meet more difficult requirements in terms of detection, speed and false alarm rates.
Separate but related to the recent RFI and the new targeted BAAs, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate has launched a new Apex visionary program called Screening at Speed that is focused on developing the technologies and framework for an Aviation Checkpoint of the Future that detects smaller threats more reliable and is capable of distinguishing potential homemade explosive threats from common items carried by travelers.
Screening at Speed also envisions passengers progress through a screening portal without divesting their shoes, laptops, coats and liquids and walk right through while their carry-on bags are placed on a conveyor belt leading to an improved X-Ray screening device that includes automatic threat recognition software.
TSA is partnered with S&T on the Screening at Speed Apex program.
As part of its future technology capabilities, TSA also wants its systems to be standards based and have an open architecture that enables the integration additional technologies at a faster pace and through a flexible and modular approach.
For the current BAA focused on EDS on checked baggage screening, TSA says adopting standard data formats and network protocols for screening systems “may enable new screening options for Concepts of Operation for enhancing security, improving screener throughput, streamlining maintenance, as well as enabling new capacity and capabilities through a modern architecture to better address present and future threats.” A common GUI could help with training of screeners, enhance screener performance, and allow new sourcing opportunities, TSA says.
As for centralization covered in the BAA, current EDS systems were developed as standalone platforms with single viewing stations although subsequent developments have enabled integration and multiplexed remote viewing stations. However, TSA says these developments are “overlays” onto the standalone platforms and it wants to “embed centralization as a core platform feature to deliver greater operational efficiencies across the security screening enterprise.”
Centralization could allow centralized automatic threat detection and accommodating “trigger-based workflows,” a vendor agnostic image network that can prioritize “assignments based on passenger risk, scan results, and baggage routing logistics owing to travel time dependencies,” and central storage of scan images and screening records for recall.
The emulator portion of the BAA refers to platforms that “permit baggage image data to be processed with different detection algorithms” that will allow a screener to do alarm resolution protocol functions.
Under the BAA, TSA is looking for technologies that have attained proof of concept or prototype level of maturity. If technologies aren’t mature enough to go from proof of concept to prototype in 12 to 18 months then they are probably not appropriate for this effort, the agency says. (Sol. No. HSTS04-15-BAA-CT7029. Respond by Aug. 3. Contact: Josh Lim, contract specialist, [email protected], 571-227-3409).