A $1 million van may soon be driving through the streets of State College and around Penn State's campus.
Yesterday, representatives from the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) toured a mobile command post they hope to purchase within the next year, as early as six months from now.
The college hopes to use the high-tech van -- dubbed the Network Emergency Response Vehicle (NERV) by its creator, Raleigh-based networking corporation Cisco Systems -- as part of an "extreme events laboratory," IST Dean Hank Foley said.
Foley said he plans to combine NERV with simulated command-and-control and data fusion centers within the IST building and added that IST students would benefit from the van's purchase.
"The goal would be to give our students an opportunity to put their hands on technology," Foley said. "It would put Penn State in the lead in developing extreme events and security science."
Foley said the extreme events laboratory would enable students to explore security scenarios involving potential terrorist targets like the Breazeale Nuclear Reactor, the Bryce Jordan Center and Beaver Stadium.
The vehicle has been used in national recovery efforts after natural disasters like the San Diego wildfires and Hurricane Katrina.
NERV was developed as "technology we know works in a disaster situation," said Bob Browning, senior manager for tactical operations support at Cisco.
"It's not a demo vehicle. It's not a marketing tool," Browning said. "It's something that works every day."
NERV includes voice-over Internet Protocol (IP), radio over IP, video over IP, a hi-definition videoconferencing system and a wireless mesh incident network.
The mesh network "can create an area of wireless Internet around the truck," said Tim Woods, the main architect of the NERV project.
"[NERV] can bring disparate audio resources together, so that they can talk to each other," Woods added.
Woods said there are ways Penn State could utilize the vehicle's technology.
"It could provide a complement to the security personnel, especially with football games, to be used as a mobile command center," Woods said. "It could roll into the satellite campuses. [IST] could use it as a mobile lab scenario where they can test their research projects."
The van's high cost elicited mixed reactions from those who toured it.
"It's very impressive technology with a lot of potential," said Eva Pell, senior vice president for research and dean of the graduate school. "My instinct is that $1 million doesn't sound like too much for the opportunity to do work like this."
Art Jones (graduate-information sciences and technology) said the technology would need to be shared with Centre County emergency services to justify its high cost.
"I see this as a big box of technologies," Jones said. "They say they would use this as a lab -- to test what? To find what? To experiment what?"
Attendee Michelle Young (senior-information sciences and technology) said she was impressed by the "interoperability of the communications."
"You can have the most sophisticated system with all kinds of capabilities, but it has to be able to interact with the people to be useful," Young said.
