{"id":113855,"date":"2020-10-04T16:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-04T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/darpas-sigma-program-transitions-to-protect-major-u-s-metropolitan-region"},"modified":"2020-10-04T16:26:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-04T23:26:00","slug":"darpas-sigma-program-transitions-to-protect-major-u-s-metropolitan-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/darpas-sigma-program-transitions-to-protect-major-u-s-metropolitan-region","title":{"rendered":"DARPA\u2019s SIGMA Program Transitions to Protect Major U.S. Metropolitan Region"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/darpas-sigma-program-transitions-to-protect-major-u-s-metropolitan-region.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On a blustery winter day last December, a car carrying radioactive material approached one of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey\u2019s major transportation hubs. As the car got closer, an alarm flashed and sounded on a large monitor in the police operations center, identifying on a digital map the exact location of the vehicle and the specific radioactive isotope radiating from the car \u2013 Cesium-137. Within minutes, officers in the Port Authority Police Department \u2013 equipped with vehicle-mounted and pocket-sized radiation sensors displaying the same real-time digital map \u2013 tracked the vehicle and apprehended the suspects in a parking lot. Thankfully, the potential terrorists and radiation-emitting isotope were not a threat, as the scenario was only a drill.<\/p>\n<p>The December exercise marked the capstone for DARPA\u2019s SIGMA program, culminating a five-year effort to develop and deploy an automated, high-performance, networked radiation detection capability for counterterrorism and continuous city-to-region scale radiological and nuclear threat monitoring. The transition of the radiation-detection system took place prior to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. In the eight months since the SIGMA transition, DARPA has been developing and testing additional sensors under its SIGMA+ effort to detect chemical, biological and explosive threats as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to thank the Port Authority for their outstanding support throughout the SIGMA program and their continued support as we test SIGMA+ sensors,\u201d said Mark Wrobel, DARPA program manager in the Defense Sciences Office. \u201cBeing able to test and refine the system in the country\u2019s largest metropolitan region was invaluable in taking SIGMA from a research project to an operationally deployed system in just five years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a blustery winter day last December, a car carrying radioactive material approached one of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey\u2019s major transportation hubs. As the car got closer, an alarm flashed and sounded on a large monitor in the police operations center, identifying on a digital map the exact location of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,19,2414,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-terrorism","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}