<title>Maritime homeland security modeling: Coast Guard issues and perspective</title>

Abstract

Under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) is the lead agency for maritime homeland security and, as such, is the primary guardian of America's waterways and coastlines. Maritime homeland security presents unique challenges for the USCG operational community and researchers tasked with finding improved technologies, tactics, and procedures that can enhance mission success. USCG "solutions" are seldom myopic; multiple simultaneous traditional mission program areas cannot be ignored. The USCG Research and Development Center (RDC) has been actively engaged in developing models for decision support across all program areas. This paper discusses some homeland security modeling efforts recently conducted by the RDC and the issues associated with their use. Though they are based on Department of Defense-(DoD) developed models, many of the critical aspects of USCG-specific model applications are different from DoD model applications. Day-to-day USCG operations require sorting through a wide variety of benign (legitimate) traffic and activities to detect and prosecute illegal activities. Sensor performance, tactical processes, environmental characteristics, and traffic considerations illustrate the requirements associated with modeling USCG operations. The complexities of determining how to measure mission success are also discussed.