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GCN Home > 09/11/06 issue

Next steps for technology

How U.S. R&D efforts have pushed development forward

By Joab Jackson, GCN Staff

In the golden days of broadcasting, alerting the populace to an impending disaster was easy. With only three major television networks, and a limited number of radio stations, the government could simply send an electronic warning to those media outlets, which would relay the message to their audiences. Everyone of a certain age remembers the tests of the emergency broadcast system.

But the conduits of communications have multiplied exponentially. People watching television could be tuned in to any one of hundreds of channels. They could be visiting one of millions of Web sites, or communicating via cell phones, pagers or chat rooms. How can the government alert the populace to, for instance, a terrorist attack?

This was one of the many technology challenges the country had to face after Sept. 11, 2001. Changing threats demand new capabilities, and government, along with industry, poured money into fresh technology initiatives.

The events of Sept. 11 “changed the dynamics of what we need to do,” said Ann Buckingham, deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of National Security Coordination.

“We have entered into a period over these past five years that has been almost totally unlike anything we have been through in the past,” said Jules Duga, a senior researcher at Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, Ohio. Among other things, Battelle runs several labs for the Energy Department.

Duga compiles an annual report on R&D spending in both the private and public sectors. While federal spending has grown modestly in the last five years, the shift of funds to counterterrorism work has been noticeable.
Warning: Various ways to alert the public are being explored.
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Warning: Various ways to alert the public are being explored.
“There has been a concentration of funding in detection and amelioration of potential impacts of terrorist attacks,” Duga said. “There’s [also] been a lot that went into prevention by enhancing technologies for surveillance and intelligence.”

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Homeland Security, IT Management



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