Power of Passengers Challenge

in Power of Passengers Challenge TSA is calling on innovators and citizen inventors to leverage innovative approaches and other innovations that would increase TSA’s security effectiveness and efficiency efforts and improve passenger experience.

To accomplish this mission, TSA is looking for the best possible solutions from you – the crowd – to help with The Power of Passengers Challenge.

On any given day, TSA screens nearly nine million passengers and bags in the United States of America at more than 400 federalized airports. In order to accomplish this task, TSA employs a diverse mixture of security measures, including:

Approximately 50,000 transportation security officers
Nearly 950 imaging technology machines
More than 350 explosives specialists
More than 1,000 canine teams

Beyond its well-known responsibility for securing airport locations in the United States, TSA also is responsible for inspecting foreign airports with flights departing to the United States, inspecting billions of tons of cargo annually, and securing more than 4,000 maritime ports and terminals and more than 600,000 bridges.

The combined domestic and international efforts of the TSA use and generate large amounts of logistical, operational, and security data.

TSA is looking harness new approaches and innovations, from other industries to improve overall security effectiveness, operational efficiency, and passenger experience.

Focus Areas

The Challenge will focus on:

SITUATIONAL AND/OR OPERATIONAL AWARENESS: How can the TSA maintain situational and/or operational awareness in a variety of environments (e.g., airports, cargo, bridges, and maritime), with or without on-site personnel?
SECURITY SCREENINGS: How can the TSA leverage the power of passengers before, during, and after security screenings without sacrificing effectiveness?
PASSENGER ARRIVALS: How can passengers provide and share information about their impending airport arrival to facilitate more efficient screening processes?
INTERNATIONAL ARRIVAL TRANSFERS: How can passengers arriving at a U.S. airport on an international flight more efficiently transfer to domestic flights without diminishing security?
COVID-19 RECOVERY: How can the TSA enhance or alter current operations, procedures, or policies to contend with the changing dynamics in a post-COVID-19 transportation environment?

The Challenge invites innovators and citizen investors to submit responses with approaches or innovations that can re-envision how the TSA generates, interprets and uses data to improve security, efficiency, and passenger experience.

The TSA seeks responses that address one or more of the following areas of interest:

Area of Interest 1: Security Effectiveness – Improved security outcomes, improved false alarm rate, increased detection of prohibited items, improved identification of mal-actors, better situational awareness of security performance and effectiveness, etc.
Area of Interest 2: More Efficient Options for Screening Passengers – More efficient use of screening personnel, decreased number of procedural steps, decreased cost per passenger screened, increased passenger screening speed, increased number of passengers screened, improved use of airport infrastructure (physical constraints), etc.
Area of Interest 3: Improved Passenger Experience – Decreased passenger queue wait times, improved passenger divestiture of items, increased predictability of experience, improved ease of experience, greater levels and options for autonomy and self-service, etc.

Whenever possible, proposed approaches should be largely invisible or unobtrusive to passengers.

Proposed approaches may not:

Add significant actions by the passenger unless for the benefit of or under the discretion of the passenger
Add significant wait times for the passenger unless for the benefit of or under the discretion of the passenger

Additionally, proposed approaches may not result in increased costs for security or operational programs. Ideally, net costs to the TSA should be minimal, if any.

Awards:-

Total Cash Prize Pool: $215,000

Prize Breakdown

One grand prize for the proposal that has the greatest simultaneous impact on all three areas of interest (security effectiveness, operational efficiency, and passenger experience): $30,000

Each of the three areas of interest can award up to three prizes:

One first place prize per area of interest: $25,000
One second place prize per area of interest: $20,000
One third place prize per area of interest: $15,000

One special $5,000 prize may be awarded to the response deemed most impactful by TSA.

Non-monetary Prizes

Additionally, Winners may also be considered for:

Establishment of a vendor relationship
- If the proposed technology is commercially available, TSA may seek to establish a vendor relationship with the submitter.
Supporting with mentorship
- TSA could assist respondents by establishing mentorships to aid in the refinement/advancement of proposed approaches.
- Connections to technology accelerators or other innovation development programs
- Connections to existing developers and/or manufacturers
- Assistance with advancement/finalization of proposed technology
- Invitations to TSA conferences and/or lectures
- Opportunities to speak with broader security audiences