Backgrounder

December 2005

Homeland Security Institute provides Purdue engagement role

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Responding effectively to homeland security issues clearly points to how Purdue University is fulfilling its land-grant university mission in the area of engagement, helping Indiana communities in urban and rural areas better respond to emergencies, whether they're a natural, man-made or a terrorist disaster.

Since it was formed in August 2002 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Purdue Homeland Security Institute's team of experts has been working with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security and local emergency preparedness officials to help them anticipate, detect and act against all threats to our homeland.

The expertise in this area that Purdue provides is well beyond the scope of what local, county and even state government can handle in finding the right answers in the event of a local, regional or statewide emergency.

The Purdue Homeland Security Institute, which is a part of the e-Enterprise Center at Purdue's Discovery Park, has offered several formal, large-scale computer simulation exercises, working with local, state and federal emergency responders.

Those are done through the institute's four research centers – Center for Computational Homeland Security; Center for Sensing Science and Technology; Center for the Security of Large Scale Systems; and the Center for Military and Law Enforcement Technology, Training, and Tactics.

The goals of these multi-county simulations, which align with Discovery Park's threefold mission of discovery, learning and engagement, are designed:

• To help Indiana communities develop crisis management and emergency response plans to ensure lives are saved and commerce is uninterrupted in the event of a real disaster – or the new reality of the 21st century, terrorism.

• To train emergency management, fire, law enforcement, health department, hospital, emergency medical and media personnel to better respond to such emergencies.

• To prepare the next generation of emergency responders by offering, beginning the fall of 2006, an area of specialty in homeland security in the colleges of agriculture and technology at Purdue – for example, a degree in biological engineering with a specialty in homeland security.

We work hand in hand with state homeland security officials and local and regional emergency responders. It's a partnership designed to help save lives and manage crises.

Four large-scale, computer-based measured response simulation exercises have been held annually since 2003 on the Purdue campus for Tippecanoe and several surrounding counties. A multi-county exercise also was held for Vanderburgh County and the Evansville area in 2004.

And a full-scale exercise is planned Dec. 8-9 in Jennings County, home to the Muscatatuck State Development Center, which now is a homeland security training center. There, 450 people from the FBI, Indiana State Police and local emergency responders will participate in the training exercise put on by the Purdue Homeland Security Institute and the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.

The Purdue Homeland Security Institute staff also works with a small army of graduate and undergraduate students on the West Lafayette campus.

Writer: Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, pfiorini@purdue.edu

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