Commercial Radar Studied for Option as Homeland Security Tool to Protect Great Lakes

Erie-area researchers are studying whether low-cost commercial radar might be used to track vessels on the Great Lakes for homeland security purposes.

"In the wake of 9-11, the United States and Canada have taken significant measures to further secure our borders. However, the Great Lakes borders remain a significant weak spot,'' said Susan Breon, president of the Center for eBusiness & Advanced Information Technology.

"Ask the border patrol and Homeland Security how many boats go back and forth between Canada and the U.S., and they don't have any way to know,'' said Robert Gray, director of the Center for Navigation, Communication, and Information Systems at Penn State-Behrend. About 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Canadian border consist of the Great Lakes.

Breon's business development group is partnering with researchers at Behrend and Mercyhurst College and have already gotten a $50,000 seed grant for the project's first phase -- testing whether the radar will work.

"This radar was never intended for this kind of a mission and we have to see how it performs ... if it will be able to tell the difference between a boat and a flock of gulls,'' Gray said. ``It sounds easy, but it's not.''

The other partner in the venture is Robert Heibel, the FBI's deputy chief of counterterrorism during the Reagan administration, who now directs Mercyhurst's Institute for Intelligence Studies.

Heibel has the government contacts to determine which national security agencies could use the boat traffic data generated by the project.

Breon's group, and state Sen. Jane Earll, R-Erie, who got the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development Grant for the initial study, are interested in the project because it could bring jobs to the area, should a security center or technology cluster result from it.

"This project not only does that, but also shows the benefits of collaboration with our area colleges and universities,'' Earll said.

Testing the radar could take up to a year, Gray said.