PENNSYLVANIA Defense Department will start first-responder tech center at Pitt

The center is expected to work on technology to aid in information-sharing.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The Defense Department has chosen a University of Pittsburgh business laboratory to market technology that could benefit law enforcement, firefighters and emergency medical personnel responding to a terrorist attack.
Pitt officials and U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., hope the National Center of Excellence for First Responder Technologies, announced Monday, will tap into the projected $98 billion that the Council on Foreign Relations estimates the nation must spend to prepare for potential attacks. That doesn't count millions more that local first responders will spend on communications equipment and other devices so they can join any national response to an attack.
Murtha said the nation's major intelligence agencies are predicting a "major biological or chemical attack ... between now and the [presidential] election."
"And right here in Pittsburgh, you're going to have the center to develop a response to any kind of attack. We just hope it comes in time," Murtha said.
Murtha said he expects the center will develop technology to help federal and local agencies share information better and to adapt specific defense products and technology for firefighters, police and others.
Example
One example is a helmet the Navy is developing to filter battlefield noise so those who wear it can hear radio messages. That same technology -- which seeks to conduct radio signals through the skull of the person wearing the helmet -- would be valuable to firefighters, too, said Jim Rooney, director of Pantherlabs Works, where the new center will be based.
Murtha said he learned how ill-prepared the federal government was to coordinate a response with local emergency crews after a hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
"One of the byproducts they had at that time was [a problem with] communications," Murtha said. "Virginia couldn't communicate with Maryland and Maryland couldn't communicate with Washington, D.C."
Murtha, the powerful ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House, has obtained $1.9 million in federal funding for the center through this year, and hopes for another $2 million next year.
Pantherlabs will probably add only one or two more jobs because of the federal designation. But the economic benefit could spread much farther if firms from western Pennsylvania or elsewhere find a new market for their wares through the center, Rooney said.
Working together
The new technology center will work with other research centers at the university and 88 other Defense Department research labs nationwide, including the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
"This is not just something for Pittsburgh, this is not just something for western Pennsylvania -- this is for the nation," Murtha said.
Murtha said the whole point is to make such equipment and technologies affordable, so those who respond to disasters or attacks have the best equipment at the best price.
"It doesn't make much sense to develop the technology and then leave it sitting on a shelf somewhere," Murtha said.