Bringing together the various entities involved--agencies, fire and police, private stakeholders--has been no small feat, says Barani.

"The biggest challenge is education," he says. "As far as I know, this has never been done before, never attempted on a scale this big. It would be easier if it were just the Port Authority involved, but there are commercial stakeholders at the site. There are the city agencies, NYPD and FDNY. There are stakeholders outside the site that have just as much at stake if we get attacked. The toughest part is educating these stakeholders and getting this information out to the point where they see this will benefit everyone, as a group with common security needs for lower Manhattan."

But the cooperation is there, he says. And he is pleased with the progress he has made. The situational awareness platform, he notes proudly, is being talked about elsewhere, including among Port Authority officials, who are contemplating taking it agencywide.

"We are developing actionable information so that first responders can respond with as much information of the situation as can be generated from diverse systems at multiple locations through the development of scenario-based rules, and that's the key. For example, we have over 4,000 cameras here. To actively monitor that would be impossible. The basis of the [Situational Awareness Platform], why it's so powerful, is that we can reach out through the API and retrieve the information we need based on rules that we develop for that specific situation. We don't have to monitor every single camera on the site, every alarm.

"We have to get the information in, correlate and fuse it and disseminate it in a coordinated fashion. With this system, we are able to do that."