Through efforts by the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center and its three subcontractors, the project will develop content and software to help the nation's emergency management personnel respond more effectively to an agricultural or zoonotic bioterrorist event.
The project is called "Situational Competency, Simulations and Lessons Learned for Food/Agricultural Bioterrorism." The Department of Defense is funding the project through the Technical Support Working Group of the Combating Terrorism Technology Support Office.
Principal investigator is Marty Vanier, DVM, assistant director and program coordinator of the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center.
Subcontracting partners are: University of Alabama-Birmingham's Center for Emergency Care and Disaster Preparedness; Cell Exchange, Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.,-based software and technology developer; and Analytic Services, Inc., (ANSER), an Arlington, Va.,-based public service research institute that provides information systems delivery.
As partners on the project, Analytic Services, Inc., will compile an agrosecurity lessons learned database based on modifications of existing software; Cell Exchange will create a "dashboard technology" based on its "Protect America" real time content aggregation system; the University of Alabama-Birmingham will create a series of rotating images to increase awareness of agricultural biopreparedness.
The elements will be integrated into an National Agricultural Biosecurity Center portal at K-State, Vanier explained.
She said the first objective is to scour the nation's emergency response community for examples of significant lessons it has learned from various agrosecurity response efforts, including naturally occurring outbreaks of diseases of plants a
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Contact: Marty Vanier, DVM
mvanier@k-state.edu
785-532-6193
Kansas State University
9-Sep-2004