Taking on terrorists is mission one for local coalition

Ambitious plan relies on some high-tech tools, writes Tom Sowa.

A couple dozen Inland Northwest technology companies, plus area economic development groups and universities, have banded together on a post-9-11 project that is, at the same time, enormously ambitious and obvious.

Tom Sowa
The Spokesman-Review

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/business-news-story.asp?date=053004&ID=s1524336&cat=section.business

Since the federal government now wants regions and states to develop their own strategies for protecting citizens from terror attacks, this new group has made that goal its mission.

Launched just three months ago, the group is called the Northwest Coalition for a Safer
America. It brings together companies in Spokane, North Idaho and across Washington state, plus universities, SIRTI, INTEC and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in the Tri-Cities.

If the idea jells, the concept would mean that over the next decade Northwest companies would develop tools that guard our dams, shield our borders, protect our ports, equip first-response teams with smart sensors, and channel gobs of information into smart computers that can keep key agencies up to the minute on possible threats.

Sure, that’s a massive concept. But that’s exactly what the federal government wants to see happen, not just in the Northwest, but across the land.

Instead of a top-down approach to national security, the federal Department of Homeland Security is backing “a community by community” effort, said Donald Tighe, a spokesman with the department’s science and technology group.

A number of area economic development groups are helping push the coalition forward. Chairing the coalition’s executive committee is Tom Turner, CEO of Spokane-based Itronix Corp., which makes ultrarugged computing devices used by the military and first-response agencies.

Philip Galland, who is one of the spark plugs behind the coalition, said the major goal is helping establish a stronger and safer country. But the coalition, if successful, has the added value of boosting the economy, since local tech companies would get more federal contracts and sell more products over time.

Galland is a Spokane businessman who’s spent the last two years working the Beltway, finding opportunities for area tech companies.

He acknowledges that the coalition’s most powerful partner, as seen by budget planners in Washington, D.C., has to be PNNL, the federal research lab that now gets more than $300 million a year for research related to national security.

Its researchers are already heavily engaged in some of the most complex and challenging puzzles the government has identified in finding security solutions, Galland said.

Galland, Turner and others in the coalition don’t want to get too far in front of themselves. But they point out that if the coalition really develops solid results, the concept could become a template and be cloned in other parts of the country.

Backing that idea is Doug Lemon, who coordinates homeland security projects at PNNL.

“I believe having a true regional agenda will greatly strengthen the ability of this region to get national attention,” he said. “Some of the things we develop could be models for other regions to adopt.”

Talking to Turner, one realizes the Inland Northwest has dozens of tech companies that can contribute to a regional security grid. There are biotech firms developing first-response tools, such as GenPrime and InnovaTek; hardware developers building networking and communication tools, such as Itronix and Vivato; and software companies involved in high-end network protection or analysis, such as Next IT, TriGeo and ToolBuilders Laboratories. Then there are the numerous companies involved in managing and protecting the electrical energy system, from Itron and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories to Avista and ReliON.

A first likely area for traction, said Turner, is in the area of analytic software. “One area would be the development of artificial intelligence tools that would help manage huge streams of information,” Turner said. Several companies here have been working on technology that could help civilian or government agencies track and analyze data from across the region, he said.

Those companies would fit perfectly into some recent initiatives started at PNNL. Earlier this month, for example, Homeland Security officials designated PNNL as the U.S. home for the National Visual Analytics Center — a testing ground for using the nation’s fastest, most powerful computers to track and analyze a wide range of possible terror threats to the United States.

The visualization center will need tools and talented people to establish a much faster, smarter network that can find and identify the threats buried inside the “chatter” that national security teams track on their own.

The coalition concept, added Lemon from the PNNL, is vast and complex. But the timing is exactly right. Federal officials know the challenge of a well-planned security system can’t be met solely by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

The real work, he said, will be done in places like Spokane, Seattle, the Tri-Cities, the Palouse, Coeur d’Alene and Missoula, Mont.