Battelle is developing a port security system called Harbor Shield, which is designed to scan the underhulls of ships for any aberrations as they enter ports and harbors, and then provide images to authorities. As a ship passes through Harbor Shield, its array of underwater scanners and sensors enter the characteristics into a library. If an anomaly is detect the operator is notified. Each time the ship passes through, new data will be compared to previous scans. Development of Harbor Shield began in 2007 with a proof-of-concept study in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. Afterward, the Office of Naval Research funded the design and fabrication of test hardware for a full-scale demonstration of the portal. ONR has now provided funding for a second phase where the hardware will be installed and operated at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I., and in the Narragansett Bay shipping channel. “This next phase of development is key to understanding data from military and commercial ships,” says Rich Granger, Battelle’s project manager for Harbor Shield. “This demonstration will show that underhull scanning can be performed while vessels are in transit under a wide variety of environmental conditions.” The system could be deployed at naval facilities, domestic ports and other locations such as the Panama Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway, and river entrances.