John Paul M. Joaquin Tech 01.04.2023 02:Jan AM EST

DHS Develops New Portable Gunshot Detection System — Where Will It Be Used?

Public areas and gatherings will soon become much safer.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has developed a new Gunshot Detection System portable enough to provide key information about outdoor shooting incidents to first responders almost immediately.

The recently-developed technology could soon be developed in public gatherings, particularly in music festivals and political rallies, per Gizmodo.

DHS New Portable Gunshot Detection System Details

The DHS mentioned in a recent statement that its new portable Gunshot Detection System, called SDS Outdoor, is an enhancement to the current commercial, off-the-shelf Guardian Indoor Active Shooter Detection System.

The new system, which is the product of the collaboration between the DHS' Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and Shooter Detection Systems of Rowley, Massachusetts, is mobile enough for one or two officers to transport and set up outdoors.

Specifically, the SDS Outdoor can be deployed in locations where infrastructure support is unavailable for temporary events, like open-field concerts or pop-up rallies.

This increase in mobility will help responders approach gun violence incidents with "greater awareness," helping them reduce response times and increase responder safety.

According to S&T First Responder Technology program manager Anthony Caracciolo, the First Responder Resource Group identified the old system's problem in portability, which led to this improvement.

The new system uses the sound and flash of the gunshot to detect and validate each one - a new technological advancement considering most other systems rely on the sound of a gunshot to detect them, leading to a higher rate of false positive reports.

By using both the sound and flash of a gunshot, the new system significantly reduces the amount of false positive detections old systems report.

DHS' SDS Outdoor's upcoming release follows almost two years of development from the agency's S&T, which started in January 2022.

The system's prototype first debuted in a real-time demonstration to a user advisory group in May 2022, when it was tested by S&T's National Urban Security Technology Laboratory and the First Responder Technology Program team in an Operational Field Assessment at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in November 2022.

During this testing, the agency relied on feedback to make it more effective in detecting and reporting gunshots accurately.

A Healthy Dose Of Skepticism

Not everything about the new SDS Outdoor system is good though. Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Alber Fox Cahn said despite the system using a gunshot's sound and flash, there will still be inaccuracies in its reports.

Additionally, law enforcement may be tempted to misuse the system if it so wishes.

"Past efforts to detect gunshots in real-time have not only wasted taxpayer dollars, they've put civilians in harms way when officers are falsely told that fireworks and car backfires are active shooters," Cahn said.

These past efforts were spearheaded by notable gunshot detection firms, including Shotspotter, which claims it has a 97% aggregate accuracy rate for real-time detection of gunshots.

Cahn is not the only skeptic about gunshot detection systems. Activist groups led by the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University's law school argued that Chicago police are allegedly putting "blind faith" in ShotSpotter's accuracy to make arrests without pursuing additional leads.