Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
came to Baltimore today, Dec. 5, to announce the selection
of The Johns Hopkins University to lead a national
consortium that will investigate how the nation can best
prepare for and respond to large-scale incidents and
disasters.
The Center for the Study of High Consequence Event
Preparedness and Response, the fifth national DHS Center of
Excellence, will receive $15 million in federal funding
over the next three years to research deterrence,
prevention, preparedness and response to both man-made and
natural disasters, including hurricanes and terrorist
attacks. It will begin its work immediately.
The announcement was held at The Johns Hopkins Hospital's
Hurd Hall and began with an address by university President William R. Brody and
remarks from Charles McQuery, undersecretary for science
and technology at the DHS. Also in attendance were Sen.
Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin of
Maryland, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and various other
local government and Johns Hopkins officials.
The new center will explore such issues as critical
decision making, integration of regional resources and
health systems, surge capacity in medical facilities and
the development of sensor networks to provide early warning
alerts. In particular, it will study interaction of people
and organizations and the need to use models and
simulations.
"There is no more important issue for the department than
planning for and responding to potentially catastrophic
events," Chertoff said. "As we learned with Katrina and
Rita, and as we see in the ongoing threat of avian flu,
high-consequence events — whether man-made or natural
— pose an
enormous risk in terms of loss of life and potential
economic damage and disruption. Planning for these kinds of
events is a top priority for DHS, and the new Center of
Excellence at Johns Hopkins will be an important resource
for understanding many of the issues tied to effective
catastrophic emergency preparedness and response."
In addition, one of the center's key goals will be to
educate the next generation's leaders in science, policy
and public service in and related to the field of critical
event preparedness and response.
Brody said that Johns Hopkins has a long history of serving
the nation's defense, noting in particular the work
conducted at the Applied
Physics Laboratory, which came into being during World
War II to assist the Allied effort.
"We are optimistic that this unique consortium, which
includes researchers and scientists from 28 entities across
eight states, will foster interdisciplinary and
collaborative responses to some of the greatest challenges
facing America," Brody said.
The center will fall under the auspices of Johns Hopkins'
Office of
Critical Event Preparedness and Response, known as
CEPAR, which began its work in 2002 and has positioned the
university as a national leader in this field. CEPAR serves
as the command center and clearinghouse for enterprisewide
planning and response to critical events.
Nursing Dean Martha Hill and Gabe
Kelen and Lynn Goldman, co-directors of the Homeland
Security center at JHU, applaud remarks announcing its
establishment.
PHOTO BY HIPS/WILL KIRK
|
Lynn Goldman, professor of
environmental health sciences at the
School of Public
Health and senior research fellow at CEPAR,
will co-direct the new center with
Gabe Kelen, director of CEPAR and chair of
Emergency Medicine in the
School of Medicine.
The multidisciplinary center, to be based at the
university's Mt. Washington campus, will involve more than
90 investigators from a national consortium of 20
universities, nongovermental organizations and federal
agencies. The group of experts from Johns Hopkins includes
faculty and staff from the
Applied Physics Laboratory,
Johns
Hopkins Health System,
School of Advanced
International Studies,
School of Professional
Studies in Business and Education and schools of Arts and Sciences, Engineering,
Medicine and Public
Health. Major partners outside the university are the
Florida State Universities Consortium on Homeland Security,
the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Morgan State
University, the University of Buffalo, the American Red
Cross, the Brookings Institution and the CBRTA (Chemical,
Biological and Radiological Technology Alliance), a partner
in the National Technology Alliance.
In January 2005, Homeland Security's Science and Technology
Directorate released an announcement calling for proposals
focusing on research and education and relevant to the
study of high-consequence event preparedness and response.
Thirty-four proposals were received and reviewed by a team
of 38 peer reviewers from academia, the private sector and
multiple government agencies as part of a three-tier review
process based on the evaluation of scientific and technical
merit, mission relevance and management effectiveness. The
process resulted in site visits to four different
institutions and the subsequent selection of JHU.
"We are absolutely thrilled to have been selected. An
extraordinary amount of work and effort went into this
application," Goldman said. "This is important work, and
it's a privilege to truly help the country."
Kelen said that during the next year the center intends to
establish the "scientific underpinnings" of its work and
begin to initiate plans for specific projects. The center
will initially focus, he said, on four major project areas:
protocols for risk assessment and mitigation, communication
efforts, simulations and policy.
Specifically, the center might look into simulations of
global pandemics through the use of high-output computers,
the engineering of radiation sensor platforms and how best
to harness informal networks of entities during a disaster,
such as the churches that came together to aid Hurricane
Katrina victims.
The other Homeland Security Centers of Excellence already
operational are the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis
of Terrorism Events, led by the University of Southern
California; the Homeland Security National Center for Food
Protection and Defense, led by the University of Minnesota;
the Homeland Security National Center for Foreign Animal
and Zoonotic Disease Defense, led by Texas A&M University;
and the Homeland Security Center for Behavioral and Social
Research on Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, led by the
University of Maryland. A separate but closely associated
entity is the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk
Assessment, or CAMRA, a cooperative center jointly
sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security and the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and led by Michigan
State University.
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