AFIT institutes Homeland Security Community of Best Practices

They include:

* Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems

* Cybersecurity and resilience

* Information technology

* Artificial intelligence and autonomous systems

* Cloud technologies

* Systems reliability

* Subterrain (cross-border tunnels) detection technologies

* Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives-detection and interdiction

* Scientific test-and-analysis techniques

The purpose of a strategic future-look is to shape the application of test and evaluation in each critical area ahead of a new technology’s requirement to defend against potential threats. The new community will function as a knowledge integrator, leveraging its position at AFIT to bring together the best test and evaluation and critical-area experts to establish a strategic plan that anticipates rapidly changing threats.

Each test and evaluation plan will function as a playbook for DHS programs. It will include best practices, lessons learned and identify subject-matter expert reach-back for specialized systems, test planning and data analysis.

The community will also provide tactical support to equip the DHS program workforce with technically rigorous methods, tools and best practices that lead to efficient tests with defensible results. This builds on three recent years of support from AFIT’s Scientific Test and Analysis Techniques Center of Excellence.

STAT experts assisted more than 30 DHS programs as they formulated test-and-evaluation strategies, drafted test plans and performed data analysis.

Specific examples include:

* Designing a sequential test to determine whether system-configuration changes inadvertently reduced performance at detecting threats;

* Creating a statistics-based usage profile for a database system to direct sampling plans and enhance prediction accuracy;

* Proposing optimal-test designs to estimate the threat level at which a system’s detection probability decreases below acceptable thresholds;

* Using statistics to determine the minimum number of simulation runs required to best estimate detection performance. In addition to direct support, the team will enable graduate-level scientific and technical support to acquisition programs and provide training to the DHS workforce.

The Homeland Security Community of Best Practices is the new strategic arm and tactical-support community at AFIT for DHS test and evaluation. Dr. Darryl Ahner, director of the Scientific Test and Analysis Techniques Center of Excellence, will lead the new community’s stand-up.