Screening Maritime Shipping Containers for Weapons of Mass Destruction

Abstract

Tells of millions of shipping containers enter U.S. seaports every year carrying commerce surpassing 1.5 trillion dollars in value. As a result, the maritime shipping industry offers an attractive channel for terrorist organizations to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the U.S., or to cripple the U.S. economy by directly attacking major ports and maritime infrastructure. In order to prevent such an event from occurring, the Department of Homeland Security has initialed the SAFECON and TRUST programs aimed at improving security measures to detect anomalous goods such as these threats in container air. These programs are working to develop aggressive solutions that minimize any disruption to the flow of commerce by identifying or developing air-sample based sensors that can be installed on port gantry cranes or housed within shipping containers themselves.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA524011

Entities

People

  • Allan Buck
  • Christina Rudzinski
  • David Masters
  • David Tremblay
  • Edward Wack
  • Martha Wall

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Chemical Analysis
  • Chemical Detectors
  • Climate Change
  • Commerce
  • Containers
  • Department Of Homeland Security
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Gas Chromatography
  • Security
  • Shipping
  • Shipping Containers
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Test Beds
  • Test Equipment
  • Two Dimensional
  • Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Readers

  • Logistics and Supply Chain Management.
  • Maritime Security/Maritime Homeland Security
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.