CBTS Research Projects
A listing of CBTS research projects
Current Research Projects
Borders of the Future
Issue: The Covid-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated bottlenecks, while also spurring innovation and suggesting opportunities for improvement. In addition, technologies (especially in terms of data analytics and scanning)…
Systematic Mapping of Cross-border Threats to Enhance U.S. Agricultural Security
Issue: Protecting food security, preventing biosecurity threats, and ensuring a stable food supply is crucial for promoting economic stability, international trade, and national security. A great deal of…
Measuring the Economic Impacts of African Swine Fever Virus on United States Supply Chains
Issue: The disruption of trade and supply chains from a transboundary animal disease (TAD) spread through U.S. land, air, and seaports. A TAD event, such as African swine…
A Validated Method for Environmental Surface Sampling for Detection of African Swine Fever Virus
Issue: The global spread of African swine fever virus (ASFV) in recent years poses a tremendous risk to swine production in the U.S. as well as to associated…
Threat Assessment of African Swine Fever Tick Vectors, Ornithodoros spp.- US-MX Border and In Proximity to Swine Operations
Issue: African Swine Fever virus (ASFv), if introduced into the U.S. across the southern border by domestic or wildlife animal movements, or by human traffic could be complicated…
User-Friendly Online Dashboard for the Assessment of the Risk of African Swine Fever Virus Introduction, Exposure, and Potential Spread into the United States
Issue: The lack of accessible, operational, tools that allow the rapid estimation and update of the risk of ASF introduction and spread under diverse and continuously changing epidemiological…
Development of a Verifiable, Privacy-Controlled Medical Information Exchange Network –System Concept and Testbed
Issue: Source-assured biomedical data (BMD) distribution is critical to medicine, public health, and biological threat research. Researchers need to have high confidence that the digital assets in hand…
Sampling Design for Random Inspections
Issue: USDA’s Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) division is accountable for reducing the pest threat to U.S. agriculture in a way that does not unduly restrict commerce. To…
Inspection Tools for Improving the Detection of Invasive Species
Issue: The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) and FWS (Forest and Wildlife Service)…
A Data-Driven Risk-Based Enterprise for Operational Decision Support
Issue: Transboundary pest and disease threats (TPDT’s) represent omnipresent threats to U.S. commercial crop and animal production. While many data and information resources are available to contribute to…
Bayesian Risk Modeling
Issue: Mexico became the top U.S. trade partner in 2020 according to U.S. Census. While Canada remained as No. 2 U.S. trade partner for the fifth consecutive year,…
U.S., Mexico, Canada Risk Taskforce
Issue: To assess and manage the state of risk of any given U.S. supply chain extending across North America (MEX-USA-CAN), it is necessary to account for its complexity…
The Economics of Supply Chains: Existing Research and Open Questions
Issue: Over the last two decades, supply chains for many products have become longer and more reliant on single-source low-cost providers of inputs or assemblers of final products. …
Automated AI Capabilities for Entity Risk Screening to Highlight Supply Chain Vulnerabilities in Pharmaceutical, Chemical and ESG-Sensitive Industries
Issue: This project examines how an artificial intelligence platform designed to deliver actionable intelligence and identify institutional risks in relation to human rights violations, environmental abuses, and foreign…
Completed Research Projects
A low-cost, high throughput method to detect contraband using remote air sampling and detection dogs
Issue: Transnational criminal organizations are capitalizing on the difficulty and expense of detecting contraband once in transit, due to huge increases in the volume of ‘legal’ shipments worldwide…
U.S.-Mexico Risk Task Force to Support the Health Supply Chain Systems for Infrastructure and Workforce Threatened by the COVID-19 Pandemic
Issue: COVID-19 knows no borders, and its effects on people and the economy have taken a resounding toll on both sides of the U.S. – Mexico border. The…
Pre-harvest Supply Chain, COVID-19 Biothreat Disruption Detection and Decision Support
Issue: COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions have highlighted the need to develop a global supply chain threat and risk analysis capability, particularly for inputs related to pre-harvest livestock and…
COVID-19 Impacts on U.S. Ag Commodity Market and Trade
Issue: The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated impacts on global economic activity have unprecedented implications for markets for agricultural commodities and their products, including food. With the changes…
COVID-19 Looking Forward: Rise of Global Supply Chains, Networks and the Risk of Interruptions
Issue: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated shutdown of economic activity, first in China, then in the U.S. has drawn stark attention to the consequences of long supply chains….
Platform to Support Development of Risk Scenarios Posed by COVID-19 and Converging Threats on the U.S. Trade Supply Chain Infrastructure
Issue: Given the complex and disruptive nature of COVID-19 to supply chains and infrastructure systems, this project will build a risk-guided platform to support development of risk scenarios…
Development of a Truck Border Crossing Delays and Disruptions Economic Impact Assessment Model
Overview Issue During 2019, more than six million trucks crossed from Mexico into the United States through land border crossings, handling goods that are important inputs to U.S….
A Permissioned Blockchain Testbed for Tuna Tracking
Issue: Application of distributed ledger technologies (commonly, but not exclusively, referred to as ‘blockchains’) is a powerful means to increase visibility and decrease temporal latency, while enhancing trust…
Pre-Symptomatic Detection of Illness
Issue: Currently, disease diagnosis depends upon items such as clinical presentation (e.g., fever, cough), which can be coupled with laboratory work (e.g., swab test for COVID-19, strep throat…