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Faculty and Student
Teams Program
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Project Descriptions
Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory
Risk and Decision Sciences Group
Requesting applications from science or engineering faculty members
at institutions serving students underrepresented in science, engineering,
mathematics and technology.
Project Description
PNNL has a strong background in the development of situation awareness,
status tracking and emergency management decision support tools. Capabilities
like the Federal Emergency Management Information System (FEMIS: www.pnl.gov/FEMIS/),
EMAdvantage (www.pnl.gov/emadvantage/), Web-based Operations Status Boards
(WebOSB: http://webosb.pnl.gov/) provide the national laboratory with
insight on information sharing needs as incident command systems (ICS)
and national incident management systems (NIMS) system grow to seamlessly
support multiple users and jurisdictions. One of our focus areas is to
provide simple, affordable mechanisms that will increase situation awareness – especially
for large incidents of national significance.
Decision makers within emergency operations centers, control centers,
and command centers are looking for ways to better track and examine
the ‘status’ of fairly well defined, yet highly dynamic information.
Examples of such information include the status of traffic control points,
the status of shelters, the status of trucks in a delivery system, etc.
Status oriented information is quite heterogeneous with aspects of text
/ spreadsheet oriented attributes to provide context, geospatial orientation
to provide location, and temporal timestamps to identify changes over
time. Currently there is no easy accessible, ‘free’, service-based
method that ties each of three operational paradigms into a single cohesive
interaction and display system.
At this time spreadsheet-based systems like Excel and SharePoint lists
are used to present and manipulate the textual components of a heterogeneous
data set. Spatial tools like GIS' are good for displays, but require
programming and integration to provide good user oriented interfaces
to easily update the status of objects or elements. Currently neither
spreadsheet nor GIS oriented systems are especially adept at presenting
or manipulating status information that is temporally oriented.
The goal of this research project will be to examine the use of freely
available, service-based tools to create a single hybrid display and
interaction method that seamlessly joins the three manipulation paradigms
that the common man understands - spreadsheets, map-based displays, and
time to create a new method for presenting highly dynamic status information.
These electronic status boards will allow decision makers to better interact
with all facets of the heterogeneous status information to gather a more
complete understanding of the meaning behind the data.
The FaST team will examine how current free capabilities like SharePoint
2007, Virtual Earth / Google Earth might be applied to create a single
fused presentation mechanism that allows the heterogeneous information
to be viewed. We will explore the creation of new interfaces that will
seamlessly modify the contents of the spreadsheet and map displays based
on a slider bar or some other interactive mechanism for representing
a temporal orientation.
Applicants Responsibilities and Relationship to Project
Members
of the FaST team should have a working understanding of current
information sharing and collaboration tools like SharePoint, Virtual
Earth, and Google Earth. The team should also have an understanding
of service-based based tools to provide information and analysis
without having to install software on a client computer. Proficiency
in XML to define and interoperability and information transfer
layers will also be needed. Because existing MapDisplay and status
board capabilities were developed using Java, expertise with this
programming language would also be of benefit. Knowledge and expertise
in Java is also expected.
Qualifications of Ideal Candidate
| Faculty: |
The
faculty member of the FaST team should have expertise in the information
technologies described above. Some experience working with the
emergency management or other operations management communities
would be a plus. |
| Student: |
Working
towards a BS or BA. Works well in collaboration with faculty, other
students, and researchers. Willing to work at PNNL for ten weeks
in Summer 2006. |
Support and Financial Commitments
See Financial Information.
For More Information contact:
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