This project at the University of Southern Mississippi in collaboration with Auburn University is providing students with hands-on information technology training and education in spectator sports safety and security cyberinfrastructure. The funded activity also prepares sports security professionals to use customized tools. This consists of 1) development of a set of first-of-its-kind training resources for spectator sports safety and security cyberinfrastructure including a unifed platform, a customized curriculum, and training material and 2) summer programs to train students and sports security professionals on the developed system modules and tools through exercises - including an evacuation drill. The training resources to be developed in this project will accommodate unique information technologies to meet spectator sports safety and security requirements. The National Center for Spectator Safety and Security is also working with the institutions on this project through funding from the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. This exploratory project also engages students and faculty from partnering one junior college and two community colleges.
Intellectual Merit: The project insights, experiences, and conclusions will open and foster an interdisciplinary field between information technology and sports safety and security management. The outcomes from this project will provide a foundation for further research and education efforts, and resource development in this new discipline.
Broader Impacts: The engagement of students in the development of the training resources will cultivate their advanced scientific and engineering skills in spectator sports safety and security cyberinfrastructure that can be carried forward for future advanced research, engineering and administration of systems. The customized curriculum and material is the first endeavor dedicated to the training of a special type of workforce requiring interdisciplinary knowledge between information technology and spectator sports security management. This work will continue after this project and contribute to a new concentration area currently in active preparation. Further, sports security management will directly benefit from this work. Millions of spectators will be better protected through the use of advanced technologies and by a workforce with the knowledge, skills and experience in the use of those technologies. In addition, all the resources from this project will be disseminated as open source for broad impact.
Underrepresented Groups: The PIs use proactive strategies to recruit and retention of underrepresented students in this domain. In 2009, 11% of the African American Ph.D. graduates in Computer Science nationwide were produced from Auburn University. At the University of Southern Mississippi, nearly 28% of the undergraduate student population for fall 2009 was African-American. The PIs are committed to continuing to attract and mentor students from underrepresented groups to this project.
This project has the following outcomes: 1) a IT training platform was developed that include major IT components of: panaromic video surveillance, WiFI-based mesh network backbone and wireless sensor network 2) In curriculum development, three undergradaute courses were enhanced: ITC241 network security, ITC 400 Senior Design I and ITC 401 Senior Design II. Course projects were developed from the project development activities. In addition, one gradaute course was developped with research projects coming out of this project. In total, more than 150 students were impacted through these curriculum enahncements. 3) Two summer training sessions were hosted for existing and future sports security and safety management professionals to use the IT technology that may be used in the sports security management. They came from 2-year colleges, HBCUs, and sport management centers. 4) This project supported four graduate students who generated two journal and seven peer-reviewed conference procedding publicaitons, as well as two master thesises. 5) The poject engaged/sponsored eight students. Two summer sessions invovled nine undergradaute students with five from 2-year colleges and HBCUs. One of them is a woman student who continued her BS study at the PI's program after her associate degree in her college and she expressed the interest for a Master degree. A high student attending 2012 summer session has graduated and was admited to MIT this Fall for his undegradaute. An undergraudate who worked on the project won the second place of the Innovative Design in Computing Competition 2011 with $800 cash. 6) An open source realtime video stitching is developed and disseminated on the project website.
