The Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS S&T) has partnered with Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) and Dallas Police Department to study how interactions between officers and citizens affect conflict management.

DHS said Tuesday its study aims to develop conflict resolution strategies that prevent personal interactions from escalating into damaging events. Researchers will classify behaviors and identify engagement patterns based on video footage of police encounters.

S&T and FLETC will build on previous assessments conducted in April 2017 for the centers' conflict management training course. FLETC’s Behavioral Science Division and Innovation Operations Branch worked together to develop a conflict management and de-escalation strategy.

FLETC is also working with the DHS Center of Excellence at the Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency within the Arizona State University to explore the potential of developing conflict management models based on police behaviors. They plan to publish the results of video coding and analysis by the middle of summer, with the help of ASU’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Now, the S&T-FLETC team will evaluate the feasibility of an automated coding system designed to help law enforcement officers and researchers study personal officer-citizen interactions. Jim Grove, FLETC portfolio manager at S&T, said they hope to convert manual coding into an algorithm for automation.

“We want to learn what helps to keep a situation from escalating or what helps to de-escalate a situation,” said Laura Zimmerman, a senior researcher at FLETC.

The Federal Aviation Administration has named five host airports that will test new security systems designed to boost security against drone threats.

FAA said Tuesday its Airport Unmanned Aircraft Systems Detection and Mitigation Research Program will use the gathered input to implement new standards and technologies for airport protection against unauthorized UAS.

The program's researchers will run tests on 10 or more technologies in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Alabama and Washington, through 2023. Tests will commence later this year.

The selected airports are:

• Atlantic City International Airport in Atlantic City, New Jersey
• Huntsville International Airport in Huntsville, Alabama
• Rickenbacker International Airport in Columbus, Ohio
• Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle, Washington
• Syracuse Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, New York

The facilities meet the testing requirements of the agency and demonstrate operating conditions of airports across the U.S.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) said in its annual report that it launched 23 new projects in 2020, which reflects a year-over-year increase of 35 percent, and transitioned 11 prototypes to Department of Defense partners for large-scale procurement.

DIU received 944 commercial proposals and awarded 56 prototype other transaction agreements to companies in 2020, bringing the total number of prototype OTAs issued to 208, according to the agency’s 2020 annual report.

The agency has transitioned a total of 26 commercial platforms to DOD partners since it started facilitating prototype projects in 2016. To date, 43 percent of its projects have generated at least one prototype that moved to commercial production.

“Additionally, 51 DIU projects have ongoing prototypes that will be eligible for transition to production if successfully completed,” the report’s executive summary reads.

DIU listed some of its key achievements in the previous year, such as making five small unmanned aerial systems available for federal procurement on the General Services Administration schedule as part of the Blue sUAS program, scaling the predictive maintenance platform to additional Air Force and Army partners and aircraft and launching advanced energy and materials as the sixth technology portfolio in addition to artificial intelligence, cyber, autonomy, space and human systems portfolios.

Army Research Laboratory (ARL) will help the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) compose a bio-aerosol monitor designed to detect the coronavirus. DARPA leads an 18-month effort to develop the monitor based on a combination of different technologies, the U.S. Army said Monday.

ARL joins Georgia Tech Research Institute, the University of Georgia and Cardea Bio to prototype a system that can identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus' presence in the air. The system would produce information to help communities prevent indoor infections.

“ARL’s biodetection technology is a crucial enabler for persistent biosensing in operational environments,” said Matthew Coppock, a chemist and team leader at ARL.

His team uses Protein Catalyzed Capture agents or PCC biodetection technology, originally made by California Institute of Technology's Jim Heath Laboratory.

Coppock said PCCs mimic the mechanism through which antibodies attach. The technology also allows for rapid production, with a development period of two to three weeks.

The Defense Logistics Agency is using robotic process automation to streamline supply chain management activities and reduce employee workload, DOD News reported Monday.

Frank Wood, RPA program manager at DLA, said the technology allows personnel to focus on the more complex activities in supply chain operations.

DLA Information Operations also uses a bot to process purchase requests and leases for thousands of devices, providing the agency's equipment management solutions team more time to perform other billing-related tasks.

Terra Nguyen, chief of the EMS division, said the bot addresses inefficiencies brought by missing bills, which according to her are tedious to manually deal with.

"Thanks to the integration of the bot, our EMS billing specialists have additional time to communicate with customers, research other billing issues and concentrate on additional work-related tasking," she said.