A device developed by the U.S. government can detect a human heartbeat up to 200 feet beneath rubble, but that product, deemed the “holy grail of search and rescue,” was nowhere to be found on Aug. 4, when an explosion in Beirut left countless victims beneath hundreds of collapsed buildings.
“On one hand, it’s [a] success story — we developed and commercialized the [technology],” Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate spokeswoman Anne Cutler wrote in an email. “On the other hand, five years later, it’s still not being used as widespread as it could be.”
The Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response, or FINDER, was developed start to finish in 2015 by S&T and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The DHS’s science and tech office has, for years, invented products to meet the needs of the 2 million first responders it supports nationwide. Hundreds of solutions like FINDER have been created within the government, but more often than not, they never make it to the private sector.
Communications equipment for people fighting wildfires, forensics to help identify victims of human trafficking, and machines that can identify invasive species hidden in cargo are types of security technology DHS has created. Hundreds of solutions like FINDER have been created within the government, but getting those solutions to market and keeping costs down is a challenge.
For Bob Burns, executive director of S&T’s Office of Innovation and Collaboration, the question was how to connect the developers with manufacturers, manufacturers with operators, and operators with sellers. The government is more likely than not the user of contractors and seeking out services from the private sector, which is why it struggles to push out its inventions.
“The government, in a lot of cases, is not the major buyer anymore. We’re not the sole procurer,” said Burns. “We need to think of ways that work across the entire ecosystem, and we have to find our place. And even more importantly, because of the first responders, we need to figure out how the towns and the villages and the cities across the country can buy this stuff and get the stuff.”
The 240,000-person department is rolling out a new program in January to educate graduate students at George Washington University on how to bring its products to the private sector. The pilot master’s degree program will teach 25 students how to do just that, thanks to mostly government funding. Burns said the cost of $5.7 million for three cadres of students will reap benefits down the road.
“Sending people to get a master’s at GW is not cheap, but in the long run, it will save us a lot of money,” said Burns.
Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary for Science and Technology William Bryan said in a statement earlier this year that the program will “produce a pipeline of high-quality professionals prepared to apply invaluable knowledge to the department’s operational components and the broader homeland security enterprise.”
That means more success stories, like the two people whom first responders in Nepal pulled from rubble thanks to the use of FINDER following an earthquake in April.
