Researchers at Mississippi State have begun a project in conjunction with a national laboratory to address an aspect of national security that could be exploited by terrorists.
MSU’s industrial and systems engineering department will conduct a joint research project with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to build a computer tracking and monitoring system that will track barges carrying hazardous materials on inland waterways, industrial and systems engineering assistant professor Mingzhou Jin said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has granted $441,000 for the project because, while some track their barges electronically, most companies track manually, Jin said.
“It’s basically done manually, but we want to see if we can do it automatically,” he said. “We will develop a real-time system to track barges on inland waterways.”
The real-time component will set this system apart from the current method of tracking barges. The Coast Guard requires vessels to notify them when that ship begins a trip, but no one is able to know whether they get off course outside of this singular contacts, Jin added.
The real-time capability of the new system will allow people to check on the barges at any time, ISE department head Royce Bowden said.
“At any point and time someone could go to a Web site and see the barges,” Bowden said.
Real-time means a person can see where a barge is at that exact moment in time; there is no delay on the system. This has been a problem with most present systems, Bowden said.
“They don’t have real-time capabilities,” he said. “The idea is that we will have a better idea of where hazardous materials are.”
These manual systems include the use of telephones, faxes and e-mails to communicate, Bowden said in a news release.
“The system we are developing is expected to help reduce workload errors caused by manual document processes,” Jin added.
All the information, the tracking and monitoring of barges, processed by the new system will be automatically sent to a computer data server, Bowden said.
The project will implemented over a process of two years. During the first year, the researchers will review dangerous cargo flows along the Mississippi and Tennessee-Tombigbee river systems in order to determine possible field-test sites, Jin said.
One aspect in designing the system involves tracking several barges within a long line of linked barges, known as a tow, civil and environmental professor William McAnally said.
“One barge may be part of a tow that includes anywhere from one to 49 barges,” McAnally said.
The researchers are looking at how to use sensors to monitor these barges as they pass through structures such as bridges or locks and dams, and this is one of many aspects being considered for the field tests, McAnally added.
“The integrated system will be fully tested and evaluated under various operational environments in the second year,” Bowden said.