Communicat.us

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.

The history of back end middleware shows that we’ve progressed from custom solutions to repeatable custom solutions to Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) solutions.  All the major software houses now sell COTS middleware for connecting the back end of systems.  A similar trend is occurring on the Front Ends of system as regards 3D capability.  With the advent of 3D Virtual Worlds, most notably www.secondlife.com, users have been freed from the limitations of structured gaming engines.  In game the operators’ choices are limited by the game’s designers.  The game engine provides certain choices and within that space the gamer is free to exercise his/her choice points.  Virtual Worlds, by contrast, do not typically have the concept of levels – play is more collaborative or free form.  As we see notions of gaming, virtual worlds & Web 2.0 merge together we can see that these models are, in and of themselves, decomposeable.

The graphic shows how we can view gaming & virtual worlds on a continuum depending upon how flexible the model is and who creates it.  This merge is happening with Web 2.0 technologies as well.  Facebook has become a gaming platform in and of itself and how desires to allow gaming consoles to access it (link).

While this post raises more questions than it solves, the intent is to show that in the same way that connecting back end systems became commoditized resulting in COTS middleware…the Front Ends of how we interact with software are becoming commoditized in a way that allows us to more easily traverse amongst them, i.e., from one virtual world to another, from a social networking site to a VW or within a game that has become so free form as to feel more like a virtual world.  All of these developments are a slow morph toward and end state that no one has designed.  It’s simply the way that technology undergoes natural selection when the selective force is human usability.