Unattended Sensor Technologies for Monitoring Riverine and Littoral Zone Vessel Traffic

The DHS S&T's mission is to provide federal and local officials with state-of-the-art technologies, capabilities, and other resources to protect the homeland. In turn, the S&T Border, Immigration and Maritime (BIM) Division supports this mission by developing and transitioning technical capabilities that enhance the Homeland Security Enterprise's (HSE's) mission of maintaining United States (U.S.) border security while facilitating lawful commerce and travel. Similarly, the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) is charged with protecting the U.S. by reducing the likelihood that dangerous people and capabilities enter the U.S. between Ports Of Entry (POEs). The USBP patrols approximately 6,000 miles of international land borders that the U.S. shares with Canada and Mexico. Additionally, the USBP shares responsibility for the security of the littoral zones which include the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and Puerto Rico. Many regions of the U. S. international borders include bodies of water, such as streams, rivers, and lakes. USBP agents are often tasked with performing their border security mission with limited to no surveillance capabilities and limited situational awareness in and around such areas. USBP operational environments often have elevation differences like ridges along banks or deviated shorelines and provide naturally occurring concealment opportunities such as coves and isles and overgrown vegetation. These conditions limit the effectiveness of existing short, mid, and long-range surveillance technologies. The objective of this RFI is to collect data from the sensor supplier community to inform DHS S&T and its stakeholders in the HSE of current sensor capabilities. DHS S&T requests that sensor suppliers submit a white paper describing the capabilities, maturity, safety, performance, and success metrics of each sensor meeting a majority of the Key Success Criteria (KSC) outlined in Section 2.1 of the RFI attachment. The technologies submitted under this RFI should have already undergone some development and prototyping to ensure that the technologies meet the KSC. 2/25/2020- Updated the name of the RFI to Unattended Sensor Technologies for Monitoring Riverine and Littoral Zone Vessel Traffic and provided an updated RFI attachment with the updated project name. 3/9/2020- Posted responses to questions received. 3/23/2020- Extended the due date for responses to April 1, 2020