DHS Eyes Small Business Tech for Building Collapse Survivor Rescue Operations

The Department of Homeland Security is inviting small businesses to provide information about search and rescue technologies with the potential to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency detect survivors trapped in collapsed structures.

A request for information notice from the DHS Science and Technology Directorate seeks offerings that were developed using federal agency grants under the Small Business Innovation Research program.

FEMA, which partnered with the DHS SBIR Program, could include proposed technologies in a catalog of authorized equipment for urban search and rescue personnel if the products reach the transition and commercialization phases.

Fred Endrikat, chief of FEMA’s US&R branch, said the need for new search and rescue technologies gained importance following the World Trade Center’s collapse in 2001 and resurfaced 20 years later after an incident in Surfside, Florida.

“An SBIR OATS RFI is a unique way for the government to explore research initiated by another federal agency through a previous SBIR or Small Business Technology Transfer award,” said Dusty Lang, SBIR program director at DHS.

Interested parties can submit white papers through March 16.