FUNDING: K9 Wearable Tech & Global Travel Assessment System

NOTE: the text below was created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Silicon Valley Innovation Program Office. For further details, please follow the links to the full proposal calls.

These calls for applications are issued under the Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) Other Transaction Solicitation (OTS) launched earlier this year and are targeted at nontraditional performers to offer solutions to some of the toughest threats facing the Department of Homeland Security and the homeland security mission. The call covers two mission-critical areas from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP): K-9 Wearable Technologies and Enhancements to the Global Traveler Assessment System (GTAS). Following are brief summaries of each call area:

K-9 Wearable Technologies

With about 1,400 teams, the CBP Canine Program is one of the largest and most diverse law enforcement programs in the country. Because of the critical role CBP working dogs have in law enforcement, drug interdiction and border protection, the health and welfare of the canines is of utmost concern. Due to the high-pressure operations tempo, physical demands and varied climates in which canine teams must operate, canines may suffer health problems that—if not identified and remediated quickly—may cause severe illness, injury or even death. This call seeks to determine if the lessons learned from human wearable technologies or some aspects of the technologies may be adapted for use within the CBP canine training and operational environments.

The K-9 Wearable Technologies project is comprised of the following technical topic areas (TTA):

• TTA #1: Recording and Transmitting Canine Vital Signs

• TTA #2: Receiving, Storing and Analyzing Vital Sign Data

• TTA #3: Maintaining and Updating Canine Sensor Components

Enhancements to GTAS

GTAS, a new advanced passenger data screening and targeting technology created by CBP as an open source software project, will be made available for free to commercial and government organizations worldwide that will be free to use, maintain, customize and enhance the technology. GTAS will provide foreign nation-states and border security entities the basic capacity to collect, process, query and construct risk criteria against their industry-derived standardized air traveler information. This capability will enable border security organizations to prescreen travelers entering and leaving their respective countries. This call seeks novel approaches and software improvements to advance the GTAS project, especially solutions that complement, extend and/or enhance GTAS’s existing core features.

The GTAS enhancement project is comprised of the following technical topic areas (TTA):

• TTA#1: Visualization

• TTA#2: Predictive Models

• TTA#3: Entity Resolution

These are brief summaries of the two OTS solicitations. Please review the OTS and individual call for more comprehensive information.