The aviation security environment presents a constant demand to detect evolving threats while moving passengers, baggage, and cargo safely and quickly through checkpoints and promoting a positive passenger experience. The end goal is to provide non-invasive security screening at our nation?s airports while preventing terrorist attacks and ensuring speedy and lawful trade and travel.

Priority R&D needs for securing aviation are:

• High-throughput cargo screening
• Cost-effective electronic imaging for bulk air cargo
• Passenger identification and vetting
• Rapid detection and alarming of explosives
• Distinguishing threats from non-threats on passengers
• Efficient and accurate detection of complex threat concealment on passengers and carried property

Our borders are vital economic gateways that account for trillions of dollars in trade and travel each year. Border security presents complex challenges due to geographic locations, modes of transportation, trade and travel volume, and transnational criminal organizations. DHS works to secure our borders through the deployment of personnel, infrastructure, and technology?including sensors, radar, and aerial assets?and investments to modernize the ports of entry.

Priority R&D needs for border security are:

• Cross-border tunnel detection, surveillance, and forensics
• Infrastructure tunnel surveillance
• Integrated and improved sensors, systems, and data
• Actionable intelligence gathering and sharing
• Dark aircraft and vessel detection, tracking, and interdiction
• Expedited people screening
• Maritime surveillance and communications in remote environments

DHS has identified strengthening the security and resilience of cyberspace as a priority in its Quadrennial Homeland Security Review efforts. Priority areas for safeguarding and securing cyberspace are:

• Strengthen the security and resilience of critical infrastructure
• Secure the federal civilian government information technology enterprise
• Advance law enforcement, incident response and reporting capabilities

A hallmark of homeland security, the prevention of terrorist attacks runs through the mission of every component within DHS. Terrorist tactics continue to evolve and the threat of terrorism has become increasingly difficult to detect.

Priority R&D needs in preventing terrorism are:

• Organic explosive compound and homemade explosives detection
• Improvised explosive device-related anomaly detection
• Automated machine learning

Protecting the American people from terrorist threats and attacks is the reason DHS was created and remains our highest priority. Terrorists seek sophisticated means of attack, including chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) weapons, and cyber attacks. Biological threat security, in particular, focuses around the prevention of release as well as detection of and protection against biological threats and hazards known to pose particularly high risk to the nation.

Operators in this mission space have the following priority R&D needs:

• Personal protective equipment for all CBRNE hazards
• Modeling and predictive analytics for decision making
• Disease and biological threat detection, identification, and classification in field operational environments
• Biological attack verification

Incident Management encompasses emergency response and critical infrastructure security and resilience, to include the preparedness, response, and recovery needs of more than 70,000 state, local, tribal, and federal agencies and 16 critical infrastructure sectors. Specific incident management needs are centered around the following priorities:

• Situational Awareness
• Communications
• Command, Control, Coordination
• Training and Exercises
• Responder Health, Safety, Performance
• Logistics and Resource Management
• Casualty Management
• Risk Assessment and Planning
• Intelligence and Investigation

Secure and resilient critical infrastructure is a necessary foundation for the American way of life, supporting everything from our national security functions to the comforts and conveniences of our homes. To ensure that the infrastructure available when needed, homeland security decision makers require timely, relevant, high-quality analysis of cyber and physical risks to critical infrastructure across all sectors, during steady-state operations and crisis action.

Priority R&D needs in securing critical infrastructure are:

• Dependency and Interdependency Analysis
• Cyber Analysis
• Risk-Informed Prioritization