ADSA17: Providing Solutions for Aviation Security

November 27, 2017

The Seventeenth Advanced Development for Security Applications (ADSA17) Workshop convened on October 17-18, 2017 at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Participants from academia, industry, and government gathered to engage in dialogue related to the theme of the ADSA17 Workshop: “Systems Engineering of Aviation Security Systems.” Specific topics discussed included requirement specifications for systems and subsystems; the acquisition and use of metadata; assessment, management, and use of risk; and layered security.

The ADSA17 Workshop featured more than thirty presentations from subject matter experts and leaders from industry and government over the course of two days. Presentation topics included emerging technologies, such as sensors and algorithms; aviation cargo inspection; stakeholder perspectives; behavior detection; and deep learning.

ADSA17 participants shared their views on the value of the ADSA Workshop series. ALERT Thrust R4 (Video Analytics and Signature Analysis) Leader, Professor David Castañón (Boston University) stated, “For me, as an academic researcher, the most valuable asset is getting a sense of what industry wants to address and what the government feels that its primary problems are. That helps us match what we can do with what they perceive as the big problems. I think if you ask the question for different communities that are represented here, you would get very different perspectives on the value. Some are here for the networking aspect, some are here to get educated on what other people think are the real problems that they could address and business opportunities, and others are looking for technologies. As an academician, I’m asking myself: What is the next big problem we ought to be focusing on?

Dr. Mark Witinkski, Vice President of the Chemical Analysis & Security Group at Pendar Technologies, shared his viewpoint as an industry participant, “I go to a lot of conferences, and this doesn’t feel like one. The quality of the research and the quality of what is being presented is every bit as good as you would see at the top conferences, but it has that workshop feel where you can interact during the presentations and really discuss things after the talks and during lunch. There is ample opportunity and emphasis placed on that. We’ve formed a few really important collaborations during those times and that probably wouldn’t have happened at a traditional conference.”

The DHS Center of Excellence (COE) for Awareness and Localization of Explosives-Related Threats (ALERT) has convened the ADSA Workshop series since 2009. Originally named the “Algorithm Development for Security Applications” workshop series, the name changed in 2014 following the ADSA10 Workshop to reflect how the scope of the workshop series has expanded beyond algorithms. The purpose of the ADSA Workshop series is to address research opportunities that may enable the development of next-generation systems and to facilitate collaboration and innovation between researchers from academia, national labs, and industry.

Presentations from the ADSA17 Workshop are available for viewing online: https://alert.northeastern.edu/transitioning-technology/adsa/final-reports-and-presentations/adsa17-presentations/

Final reports for all previous ADSA Workshops are also available online:  https://alert.northeastern.edu/transitioning-technology/adsa/final-reports-and-presentations/

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