Solution

• On the basis of the government’s identification of our nation’s critical infra- structure, the Executive Office of the President and the OSTP developed a research plan structured around nine science, engineering, and technology themes that would support the entire critical infrastructure sectors previously enumerated.

• The nine focused areas to encourage R&D for the critical infrastructure sectors are as follows:

  • Detection and sensor systems

  • Protection and prevention

  • Entry and access portals

  • Insider threats

  • Analysis and decision support systems

  • Response, recovery and reconstitution

  • New and emerging threats and vulnerabilities

  • Advanced infrastructure architectures and systems design

  • Human and social issues

• By mapping the long-term overarching goals to five sciences and engineering and technology themes, the following R&D priorities were created:

• Improve sensor performance

  • Develop technology to detect unexploded ordinance.

  • Develop a real-time global positioning system synchronized for electrical grid monitoring.

  • Improve sensor arrays and improve explosive and radiological detection.

  • Improve sensors for detection of tampering with water systems and building, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems.

  • Improve SCADA security for water systems and HVAC systems.

• Advance risk modeling, simulation, and analysis for decision support

  • Standardize vulnerability analysis and risk analysis of critical infrastructure sectors.

  • Conduct quantitative risk assessments to better quantify terror- ism risks to the critical infrastructure sectors.

• Improve cybersecurity

  • Develop new methods for protection from automated detection of, response to, and recovery from attacks on critical information infrastructure systems.

  • Foster migration to a more secure Internet infrastructure.

• Address the insider threat

  • Improve technologies such as intent determination and anoma- lous behavior monitoring for insider threat detection, covering physical and cyber infrastructure.

• Improve large-scale situational awareness for critical infrastructure

  • Define the communication and computing system architecture needed to create a national common operating picture of the nation’s critical infrastructures.