The Defense Department is creating a center at the University of Pittsburgh to speed commercial production of technology that could help police, firefighters and other first-responders deal with a terrorist attack.

Properly equipping those crews with state-of-the-art tools has taken on added urgency in the post 9/11 world, officials attending a news conference said yesterday.

"Like our military personnel, they need the best available technologies and equipment to be successful," said U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, a Pitt alumnus who came to campus yesterday to announce an initial $1.9 million federal grant.

The National Center of Excellence for First Responder Technologies will be housed in the already established Pantherlab Works, a center in Pitt's graduate business school that promotes technology commercialization. It will work with Pitt's research centers, private industry in Western Pennsylvania and 88 Defense Department laboratories.

James E. Rooney, director of Pantherlab Works, said the center will analyze what appear to be the most pressing needs of first-responders. Then it will identify promising research at Pitt or elsewhere and match it with companies that can help produce the equipment with either government aid or private venture capital.

Rooney said one potential innovation involves a helmet using U.S. Navy technology that sends sound through skull bone. It could help a firefighter hear critical instructions over the deafening roar of a fire.

Another breakthrough could involve new software to help law enforcement more quickly scan reams of publicly available data while investigating criminal activity.

Murtha, the ranking member of the House's Defense Appropriations subcommittee, said the need to better prepare emergency crews was illustrated plainly by the difficulty that officials in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia had communicating with one another just after a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

Murtha has said some in Washington predict another major attack before the presidential election. But even in an everyday calamity that has nothing to do with a radiological "dirty bomb" or chemical attack unleashed by terrorists, better-equipped rescue crews could mean more lives will be saved.

Officials at yesterday's news conference said they hope Pitt's new center will one day influence emergency response from rural parts of the nation to New York City and Los Angeles.

"This is something not just for Pittsburgh, not just for Western Pennsylvania. This is something for the nation," Murtha said.

They also want the center to help secure for the region a part of up to $98 billion that the Council on Foreign Relations has asserted should be focused on preparing the nation for a terrorist attack.

Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg said the university was honored by the government's choice of Pitt.