2 October, 2009, 10:02 by Glen Salmon
Situational Awareness is the the understanding of data and events within a given space and time and understanding the meaning in the present and near future. The majority of applications for situational awareness deal with multiple sources of data with correlating attributes and are often rendered in a geospatial visualization such as a map or sphere of space.
However, visualizing large amounts of data still burdens the user with the labor of correlation, analysis, and event detection.
The user’s workload is dramatically reduced and better focused when portions of the detection and control / response activity is automated within a rules engine. The operator is freed to focus on critical information when low priority data is analyzed by business rules and when automated analysis is used against the vast unwashed data. Not only can these processes handle low risk detection and fully automated response but they also perform a first order analysis and escalate significant information to the operator’s attention.
IBM Federal has developed a demonstration of situational awareness with control & response (SACR) that encapsulated the three key attributes:
- discovery, normalization, and fusion of multiple disparate data sources
- display multiple layers of related data in a geospatial map aiding situational awareness and analysis
- applies business rules to detect situations; automate task procedures, and guide user interaction where dictated by procedure, best practices, or workflow
In Fig-1 a vessel has reported a propulsion system failure and the rules engine has determined that because the vessel is a tanker carrying hazardous materials, the correct course of action is to divert to the Port of Mobile. In Fig-2 the operator at the workstation brings up the ship’s track and establishes a 100 miles safety zone which indicates which ships need to be alerted. Following the incident, the operator realized additional data would have improved the situational awareness and in Fig-3 the operator adds the locations of all oil platforms in the gulf to the mashup.
To emphasize the value of mashups, this demonstration used publicly accessible real data which is normalized and then published with a combination IBM InfoSphere MashupHub and Kapow OnDemand. The demonstrations go beyond simple situational awareness to show the next level with control and response capabilities within the real world scenario.
For the purposes of the demonstration, IBM has implemented a maritime domain awareness “workstation”. The scenario follows Lieutenant Briggs who is monitoring the gulf coast region from New Orleans, Louisiana to Mobile, Alabama. His primary tool for overseeing the are is a interactive computer based map where he can bring together multiple data sources to develop his situational awareness. The Lieutenant has complete control over the data he sees and can quickly cross reference vessel locations, weather buoy data, debris markers, and port and berth assignments. He also has the ability to pull up related information as needed on any sources. The workstation also interfaces with a rules processor which is used to process data and events. This results are quicker response and an optimized workload where the Lieutenant off-loads low priority and low risk tasks and stays focused on critical events.
In the course of the demonstration, we handle a variety of tasks:
- review shipping and weather conditions within the gulf region
- simulate a vessel reporting an engine failure and review the automated procedures surfaced from the rules processor
- communicate with ship board personnel, port authorities, and harbor and tug masters for response tasking
- simulate a weather buoy failure
- review a fully automated system response and reported action plan
- enhance the situational awareness by added another layer of data (oil platforms) to the workstation’s map
If you would like more information of IBM’s Situational Awareness with Control and Response capabilities or to see the above demonstration contact Seth Spergel or tweet to @lotusfederal.
27 September, 2009, 07:20 by Glen Salmon
IBM is hosting “Federal Mashup Day” October 22nd at the Hyatt regency in Reston, Virginia …
Learn how to unlock and easily view a wide range of information from multiple sources. In just minutes you can simply point-and-click, using a visual, browser-based tool, and assemble new applications, including feeds and widgets. Improve employee productivity by empowering self-service application development to address daily work challenges. Attend our half-day seminar and learn from the experts about the value of mashups for federal government.
More >>
31 August, 2009, 11:13 by Glen Salmon
The IBM Federal CTO team hosted the “Emergent Technology Brief” today and there was both a lot of content and a lot of discussion. If you’d like to see what all the buzz was about, here is the list of topics and all the presentation materials have been posted.
- Welcome – David McQueeney, VP & CTO, IBM Software Group Federal (audio)
- Mission based Architectural Modeling Approach / UML for mission modeling (NCSC models) – Fred Mervine (audio)
- Security / Cyber Security Concepts – John McLaughlin (audio)
Security / Multi-Level Security SOA (with demo) – Robert Tabit
Security / Cyber Defense Demo – Bernie Beekman
- Federation / Transactioning Model and SOA Federation – Eric Nelson(audio)
Federation / Information Management and Information as a Service & Metadata – Bruce Semple (audio)
- Infrastructure Management / Enterprise Cloud Strategy – Howard Levenson (audio)
- User Experience / Web 2.0, Mashups & Social Networking – Glen Salmon (audio)
- Infrastructure Management / Enterprise Service Management – Mike Moomaw (audio)
If you attended or have a question after reviewing the material, post a comment and we’ll reply right here !
9 July, 2009, 13:31 by Glen Salmon
Customers often ask about "mashups" and can be confused by the technology and all of the different options they have available.
Most mashups fall into one of two categories – "data mashups" and "functional mashups".
A data mashup is one where many different data sources are brought together into a single visualization to speed the user’s ability to understand and process the relationships between data and form answers and take action. Popular examples of data mashups include examples in real estate and city planning as well as more targeted mashups like flight planning for pilots. The majority of data mashups are created by programmers using the published interfaces provided by data sources and often uses a public display solution like a map with a published interface.
A functional mashup focuses on bringing together visual modules or widgets such as tables, maps, graphs, and input forms, to create an application to address a situational need.
A widget is a small program or piece of dynamic content that can be easily placed into a web site.
The key to functional mashups is the ability for each module or widget to communicate some of its state and information to other widgets so they may act in concert. In contrast to data mashups, functional mashups rely more on standards and reuse. As Nicole Carrier described in her talk in 2008 …
- Widgets and feeds are mashed together often come from independent sources and do not change when mashed
- New applications deliver new insights and capabilities (1+1 = 4)
- Build on a web-oriented architectures (REST, HTTP) and leverage lightweight, simple integration techniques (AJAX, RSS, JSON)
- Result is fast creation of rich, desktop-like web applications
- Simple applications that solve niche problems (i.e., satisfies the long tail)
For more information, you can check out Nicole’s presentation.
18 June, 2009, 13:12 by Seth Spergel
I attended the NRO CTO Innovation Showcase yesterday and today. Overall, a great event with a bunch of forward thinking speakers. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra kicked things off yesterday, followed by IBM’s own Jeff Jonas and then Dr. Vint Cerf from Google. Today we heard Dion Hinchcliffe, from Hinchcliffe & Associates, David Stephenson, author of "Democratizing Data," and then closed things out with a panel discussion on the use of open source in DoD.
Although I didn’t catch all of the speakers, almost everything I did catch was about opening up data and seeing where it would take us. Apps for Democracy and Data.gov were commonly cited examples, and some very interesting graphics were presented showing the success of commercial platforms like Facebook and how their growth coincided with their decision to open up APIs. (And as for how to use that data, IBM Mashup Center even got a nice plug from Dion Hinchcliffe!)
The underlying message was quite clear. This is happening on the internet, with both public and private data. The return on investment is huge. But now we need to make the effort to ensure the same thing happens inside government agencies, not just externally. The advantage is we have access to even richer data sets. The challenge, however, is getting the tools to take advantage of that data to the government knowledge workers. We have very smart subject matter experts in these agencies, and given the right tools and data, they can truly change our level of understanding of the world. But the way things work today, applications and users are too locked down to successfully take advantage of that data. Nearly everyone I have spoken to about mashups presents this same challenge. The tools are there. The data is getting there. That missing piece, the buy-in to move forward and let users see where the data can take them, is the next big challenge.
PS – If you aren’t already following them @nrocto is up on Twitter and tweeting away. Great job organizing the event!
