Submit your commercial solutions to solve national security challenges with the help from DIU.

The current COVID-19 crisis highlights the need for rapid decontamination/disinfection of rooms and enclosed spaces in shipboard and other mission-ready environments to mitigate the spread of disease or infection. Decontamination/disinfection, and subsequent reduced spread of respiratory disease, promotes continuity of military operations, mission readiness, and individual warfighter survivability. The US Government seeks solutions leveraging a technology or automated hardware solution, allowing the servicemember to focus on mission-essential tasks and minimizing collateral decontaminating/disinfecting duties. Solutions must highlight how capabilities are advancing existing decontamination/disinfection approaches and methods, in order to be considered for award.

Specifically, this prototype should advance the following needs:

• Significantly reduce potential for spread of infectious disease through rapid decontamination/disinfection of a variety of different surfaces and enclosed spaces, to include shipboard spaces, aircraft ready-rooms, well-decks, and staging locations;
• Serve as a repeatable, automated, industrial solution, capable of being stationed on board a ship, in port or on base, or other mission-ready environments;
• Utilize technologies that will not damage infrastructure, electronics, or porous materials, and state decontamination/disinfection ranges given temperature, power, material, organics, and other shipboard specifications; and
• Demonstrate ability for use and efficacy in tailored spaces, such as sleeping quarters, mess decks, or surgical suites; major controlling stations (information and navigation centers), ready-rooms, or supply storerooms; transit spaces, including stairwell railings and hatch/door touchpoints; and previously segmented (isolated) COVID-treatment areas.

Of particular interest is the ability of the prototype to work in specific conditions and settings. Solution briefs should include:

• Measurements regarding prototype size, method of mobility, power source, and power use rate;
• Pre-cleaning and terminal cleaning needs, if applicable, with associated resource requirements;
• Equipment use cycle (per square foot area) with start-up and run time, degree of surfaces covered, and the quality rating of decontamination/disinfection of the space. If applicable, include wait time until the space is able to be re-inhabited;
• Disposal and estimated amounts of used materials or filters, if applicable; and
• Any associated safety considerations to personnel, including requirements on personal protective equipment (PPE) for use or “in vicinity of” use (and effective radius).

Solutions also must also be able to describe impact to mission, in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Examples might include:

• Qualitative: method/level of manual supervision
• Qualitative: impact to mission, especially in spaces that are typically manned 24-hours
• Quantitative: time to disinfect/decontaminate, in terms of time/sqft, per type of sqft
• Quantitative: quality (grade) of disinfection (ppm)
• Quantitative: refresh rate of disinfection, to maintain quality (grade) of disinfection

Successful solutions will also take a series of technical specifications into account, including:

• Reference considerations in publicly available, military standard documents, including MIL-STD-167-1, MIL STD 461, MIL-STD 810, MIL-STD-1399, and MIL-DTL-917 (sections 3.2 and 3.3);
• Reference relevant U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals and clearances;
• Reference any previously published, specific guidance on military-grade materials (including stainless steel and copper alloys); and
• Reference relevant security protection measures.

Solutions should be readily available, have commercial viability, and currently maintain or show a path to FDA approval or clearance. With adaptations, the solution must be ready to enter the FDA review process within 6-12 months of award.

If an automated solution is suggested, the solution should maintain industry leading security protocols as well as tag and appropriately mask all data relating to ship design, based on space sensitivity.

Additional CSO process notes:

• Companies selected for follow-on pitch will need to provide examples and/or demo videos of their technology.
• The Government may facilitate teaming arrangements among submissions offering complementary capabilities to achieve desired effect. Companies are also welcome to present their own teaming arrangements in their solution briefs.

Updated 2 June 2020 (FAQ added)

Problem Statement

Transnational criminals are increasingly utilizing solutions to digitally mask their movements, anonymize funding sources, and create detail-rich false identities to avoid detection and circumvent surveillance. The speed at which criminals blend into the noise requires an equally advanced information collection, processing, and analytic identifying, tracking and due diligence capability. This Area of Interest (AOI) is focused with the long term intent of disrupting significant transnational criminal syndicate activity such as trafficking in persons.

In response, the U.S. Government seeks commercially viable solutions leveraging machine-driven analytics and datasets derived from Commercially Available Information to help identify, track and counter transnational criminals attempting to mask their identities and activities.

Desired Product Capabilities

It is envisaged that companies will deploy the following techniques:

• Data management: used to extract, transform, load, store, and aggregate large, dynamic, multi-modal data feeds;
• Natural language processing: used to translate and summarize text corpora, deep/dark web postings, and perform downstream analysis (e.g. various classification tasks). Must be capable of operating across both English and non-English language sources;
• Social and professional network analysis: used to identify linkages between individuals, corporate entities, financial institutions and other entities of interest;
• Anomaly detection: used to identify behavior that could indicate presence of fraud or illegal activity within datasets, e.g. travel itineraries and financial transactions;
• User Interface: used to allow SMEs to interact with and use platform output, and;
• Flexibility to plug into enterprise platforms or reporting tools.

The platform and data processing should maintain industry leading security protocols as well as tag data relating to known criminals based on user need-to-know protocols.

Qualities of Interest Include:

• Ability to access and process data from international sources in multiple languages and formats;
• Access to deep/dark web sources with visibility into the supply chain of sources;
• Ability to analyze structured and unstructured data from multiple modalities;
• Ability to integrate with other data and knowledge sources using open, accessible standards;
• Ability to interpret or explain modeling outputs in human-understandable and actionable formats;
• Built using open technologies with a modular systems architecture to enable performance auditing and integration with outside software, and;
• Provide a robust and accurate reporting mechanism enabling program/mission metrics, context around disparate data sources to inform analysis and data lineage on original data.

Companies providing analytic capabilities as well as those providing data sets/feeds are both encouraged to apply; in such cases teaming is highly recommended.

Solution Selection Notes:

• Companies should show how their technology or dataset specifically addresses the AOI -- generic descriptions of technology platforms are unnecessary and highly discouraged
• Proposals must include:
  • List key leadership and technical personnel from company
  • Preliminary list of the types of data provided/accessed in response to the AOI
  • Use case comprising AOI problem to be solved, with commercial technical solution deployed and anticipated results.

Frequently Asked Questions: