Bullet Summary of SDSU-Cal-(IT)² Activities

1. Practical experience with civ/mil operations for emergency response in difficult settings linked to public response systems and first responders

ShadowBowl 2003 was a major community readiness drill involving major medical reach-back to mimic a surge event because of major disaster in association with SuperBowl 2003. Five separate communication networks (wired, high performance wireless, free space optical, satellite, wireless) were established within a few days and sensor networks, communication bubbles, and command and control operations in support of the law enforcement and first responder communities were established. Sensors for chemical, nuclear, and biological events in air and water were established and monitored, along with visualization efforts to allow the data fusion of hundreds of sensor feeds, cameras, and weather data in a distributed command and control centers both in and out of the law enforcement secure network. http://www.shadowbowl.sdsu.edu and on the NIUSR page (National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue): http://www.niusr.org/NiusrMainSiteMap.htm

· FairSher was another community readiness event done in concert with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and the San Diego County Fair. The fair drew about 1.2 million people over several weeks---with all the public safety duties under the jurisdiction of the San Diego Sheriff’s Department. Led by Bob Welty, SDSU linked the Fairground and SDSU Visualization Center to the Sheriff’s Department Operations Center for interactive command and control, situation awareness with multiple cameras, a WiFi bubble over nearly all the Fairground, sensor networks monitoring the area, and videoconferencing between command and control centers. All this was done using a high-performance wireless network over San Diego County (http://hpwren.ucsd.edu), which is in place to use the Fairground as a major test facility for law enforcement and emergency operations (May and June of 2004 will be next period of activity).

Humanitarian and Medical Assistance for Iraq was provided to Dr. Eric Rasmussen, MD, who is Fleet Surgeon for the US 3^rd Fleet. Dr. Rasmussen was responsible for medical and humanitarian work with the civilian populace for southern Iraq before, during and after the war. SDSU Visualization Center working with MindTel and SRA provided remote sensing imagery (Landsat 7 and ASTER) of southern Iraq, as well as visualizations of Baghdad for monitoring elements such as safety, supplies, and communication. Communication protocols using Groove Workspace software were widely deployed as a very successful means of effective communication within an austere environment (http://www.groove.net/pdf/GrooveInAustereEnv.pdf). Visualizations using MindTel’s Neat Tools object-oriented software was used to visualize sensors from the region by Viz Center workers Steve Birch and John Graham and used by Dr. Rasmussen and other military doctors assisting with the interaction with the civilian population.

DARPA Grand Challenge and Operation Desert Bloom are projects that are currently underway. The DARPA Grand Challenge is a competition of autonomous vehicles across 150 miles of desert from Barstow, CA, to near Las Vegas, NV, on March 13, 2004. Operation Desert Bloom is the DoD funded parallel operation to do emergency medical reach-back to Loma Linda Medical Center, environmental mapping, and civ/mil interaction with the local first responders, and testing of technologies that might be of immediate application to civ/mil interactions in Iraq. Project is led by Dr. Dave Warner, of SDSU and MindTel, working with SRA as prime contractor for Desert Bloom.

HazMat partnership between SDSU Visualization Center and County Hazardous Materials Incident Response Team (HIRT team). Viz Center is acting as their R & D arm and integrator of technologies for wireless cameras, secure communications, and lifeline capabilities. Viz Center is able to act as an unbiased broker connecting vendors of many types of technologies to Haz Mat group, who are in the daily business of responding to all the hazardous materials events in the country. Linking their five trucks to a central command and control center so anthrax responses can be monitored from a central location in a secure communication pathway outside the hacking of news and media personnel is one of major Viz Center projects. http://sdsuniverse.sdsu.edu/story.asp?id=9874

Strong Angel and Strong Angel II are specific civ/mil exercises to test and optimize communication, visualization, sensors, and protocols for establishing and optimizing refugee camps in austere environments. Strong Angel was done as part of RIMPAC 2000 to help develop a globally deployable, intelligently configurable medical communication matrix (http://vader.mindtel.com/strongangel/index.htm). Strong Angel II is being done in June/July of 2004 and will seek to further the Civil-Military Operations for Humanitarian Assistance. Dr. Eric Rasmussen of US 3^rd Fleet, Dr. Dave Warner of SDSU Viz Center and MindTel, and Bob Younger of SSC-SD (now DHS) were leaders in Strong Angel, with Dr. Rasmussen leading Strong Angel II.

www.homelandsecurity.sdsu.edu is a description of the program.

CITI, Center for Information Technology and Infrastructure with Co-Directors Eric Frost and Bob Welty, is focused on the use of information technology for the benefit of the San Diego region as a template for national and global IT-enabled functionality. CITI is also Cal-(IT)² @ SDSU and is therefore a practical aspect of the overall research being done by Cal-(IT)². Our focus is on assisting the campus and local community in using telecommunications and information technology to help address problems such as Homeland Security, law enforcement and public safety, and natural resource management and optimization, such as oil deposits and water resources. Much of the work is done jointly with groups in the local and regional government and also working with military groups in the San Diego region, especially SSC-SD. Description of center is at: http://www.calit2.net/culture/features/2003/12-10_calit2@SDSU.html

2. Visualization, visualization centers, remote sensing and medical data sets displayed in forms for decision makers delivered over the web with browsers

Visualization center designed and built for inexpensive, rapid deployment for groups such as law enforcement, county HazMat, and DARPA Grand Challenge mobile center. Local military groups are considering similar systems as a major alternative to expensive and high maintenance systems now being used in military. Visualization centers are built with commodity computers and projectors and inexpensive but highly functional materials. Functionality is largely dependent on cleverness of the network and software, which can be provided for free to nearly all participants in a network. Major open-source software expertise and high-end visualization capabilities can be supplied to all parties without them needing expensive software or hardware.

· Visualization center designed as data fusion center to bring together data from sensor networks and collaborative interaction of people. These same data fusion products can then be sent back out across optical and wireless networks to first responders and medical personnel. This provides a template for state and regional offices to gather data and act as data fusion centers and communication centers for their area of operation---we are providing the architecture to do data fusion across the networks during real events such as ShadowBowl and FairSher.

Visualization of complex geospatial data in globe format so that data can be geo-rectified at any resolution and tiled together to make it possible to fly through data and provide any perspective view, as moving imagery draped on topography to bird’s-eye, perspective view to see cause and effect, but also being able to move back to map view in high-end morphing ability to blend data together. By using GeoFusion as developing tool, we can deliver browser data free that allows viewer to manipulate data freely and understand spatial relationships of data sets. Data are deliverable over the web, as we are doing with the NASA Mars data, which we have delivered millions of downloads over the last several weeks. This mimics and even out-performs extremely high end computers and software with PC and good graphics card (in most gaming machines today).

TIDES (Trans-lingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization) was a DARPA project that we took on as a production network when it became a production rather than research effort. Information is searched from 80 to 300 information sources such as newspapers each day looking for epidemiological data, as the beginning of an epidemic. Information is translated, summarized and delivered to subscribers (http://www.carebridge.info/) including White House and national Security Council each day. Outbreak of SARS for instance, was detectable about three weeks prior to its announcement by monitoring newspaper stories throughout the world. Server currently housed in SDSU Viz Lab, transferred here from Mitre Corporation. Focus is on Epidemiology---run by Dr. Eric Rasmussen, Fleet Surgeon of 3^rd Fleet and supported by Dr. Dave Warner of SDSU and MindTel and Bob Younger of SSC-SD.

Software with spinning Earth and ability to overlay multiple partially transparent layers, as of weather, aerosols, clouds, smoke or medical demographics. Images are deliverable over the web, much like GeoFusion, but with build able layers from other web servers---done by Mike Bailey of Cal-(IT)² and SDSC (http://www.sdsc.edu/~mjb). This is a lower-end browser than GeoFusion, but able to do variety of different types of transparencies and visualizations of common data sets like weather and MODIS data.

Use of MODIS and SeaWiFS and other NASA data to look at vegetation dryness, algal blooms, chlorophyll, aerosols and other earth system science and delivered to whole US. Daily use of MODIS data for aerosols, smoke, weather, fires, algal blooms, water spin patterns, chlorophyll of crops and plants, health of plants and distribution of diseased plants. SDSU is NASA school involved with multiple projects including REASoN project on Homeland Security, which is the only such Homeland Security project within NASA (focused on remote sensing of border region with Border Patrol). Imagery of military facilities, especially in San Diego harbor, is done at the same time as imagery of general population. http://map.sdsu.edu for mobile GIS project, http://geoinfo.sdsu.edu/reason/ for projects like NASA REASoN project with Border Patrol.

GeoWall in 3D for situation awareness. SDSU and UCSD have extensive experience with the inexpensive, but high-resolution and inexpensive 3D stereo system called the GeoWall (http://www.geowall.org), which is rapidly becoming a major vehicle to do 3D stereoscopic visualizations for many data sets. Visualizations can be constructed and sent via the web, including most GIS maps such as those done in ESRI products (using ArcScene). Visualizations can be created in 3D and sent without additional software. Provides very high-resolution 3D imagery and ability to fly through the data using new (open source) software created by Jeff Sale of SDSU.

Remote Sensing with specialty of using Landsat and other satellite imagery along with vector overlays to databases such as medical, health factors and attribute data. Major capabilities in using XML to link disparate data sets together from nearly all types of database formats into web-deliverable hybrid map products. Jeff Sale and co-workers at the SDSU Educational Center on Computational Science and Engineering (http://www.edcenter.sdsu.edu) have built some profound capabilities for analyzing and displaying sociological data with their Sociology Workbench.

· High-end GIS (Geographic Information Systems) linked to Remote Sensing capabilities for both production work and training. SDSU has one of the strongest GIS and Remote Sensing departments in the country and trains most of the GIS and Remote Sensing workers in the region---so that most government mapping workers came from SDSU. We have strong ties to most major suppliers of GIS and Remote Sensing technologies and use most of them interchangeably for their specialty capabilities. We have the ability to train workers and decision makers in GIS in areas such as epidemiology, much as we already do in Geography and Public Health. http://map.sdsu.edu/mobilegis/ and http://typhoon.sdsu.edu/Research/research.html show projects and mobile GIS capabilities.

Visualizations driven by direct work with Border Patrol and first responders, especially using wireless and mobile GIS and virtual realities. By working closely with the US Border Patrol, now in DHS, we have developed a close partnership for mapping and analyzing data associated with smuggling and transport of illegal materials and people across the US-Mexican border, including via tunnels. Virtual realities created by Viz Center worker, John Ryan, are used by the Border Patrol to help train agents and assist agents in work at night, when the complex and often rugged terrain is not visible by eye or via map representations. We are a trusted partner of the Border Patrol for working on difficult issues along the border and being able to produce result without attracting media attention.

3. Sensors and data fusion of the sensor information to provide triggers and decision tools for monitoring and fusing data sets for decision makers

Visualizations to link different software outputs and products such as ESSENCE together with each other can be done in multiple ways with multiple degrees of sophistication. ESSENCE software appears to be straightforward to link into many of our existing database and workflow software. Getting copies of various software products to be used in Bionet would allow us to link them together.

We are accomplished users of the major GIS software to be used in Homeland Security by ESRI. Products for general distribution at lowest user level like ArcView and soon to be ArcGlobe are products that we can help train civilian and military Bionet users, much as we have been training thousands of students at SDSU.

Open source project management, visualization, database and mapping software that can be deployed across the nation as and also link into most major database formats. We have a long-term commitment to the development and widespread deployment of open-source software for visualization, project management, databases and other probable Bionet tasks. We can provide open-source software to greatly enhance the typical capabilities of organizations like County Health Offices. We can deliver the software via the web or CD’s and rapidly provide software capabilities at very low cost.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) of topography and wind patterns for high-value areas and times, such as nuclear reactors, sporting events, WTO talks, etc.---using strategic sensors around topography and in water, then compute the remainder of the data. Wind and water flow patterns are often very predictable given a few critical points of measurement. We can help define where critical sensors should be placed, then compute the flow patterns around topography with a wide variety of wind patterns and conditions. These patterns can then be stored and rapidly deployed as indicated by the critical sensor readings to indicate details not possible to measure with a reasonable number of sensors.

Neat Tools for object-oriented programming of sensor and responses to the sensors. Neat Tools is a very robust programming tool for medical sensors that has a large library of modules for both programming the sensors and visualizing the results. Jeff Sale, Steve Birch, John Graham and MindTel principals are world’s leaders in this programming of sensors and their visualizations. Many biometric devices have been programmed with Neat Tools and used in shadow operations such as ShadowBowl, Mother Goose parade, and SkyCastles by the MindTel workers (many of same folks working at SDSU Viz Center). http://www.mindtel.com/projects/index.html

RFID tags used for monitoring people and equipment. We are working on several projects with RFID tags, most aimed at monitoring vehicles across the US-Mexican border at the request of the US Customs and trucking agencies. We are also doing several projects with RFID tags and mobile items such as vehicles and people to test how the tags can help quantify and visualize motion and interaction of multiple tagged items.

Major work with GPS, as work being done with DARPA Grand Challenge to automatically report positions of all participants in an exercise and show on command and control center. SDSU graduate student and military intelligence worker, Tim Murphy, has written code to automatically report position back to command and control center for several GPS applications.

4. Law enforcement and first responder interaction, civ/mil, classified/unclassified linkages as a normal mode of operation for Group

Strong Angel and Strong Angel II deployment of refugee camps as model for response to pathogens and biometric tools to react to them. These projects have many similarities to Bionet and demonstrate expertise that exists within the San Diego group.

Work on Iraq with medical and humanitarian assistance for Coalition Forces (Dr. Eric Rasmussen, Fleet Surgeon for 3^rd Fleet and responsible for medical and humanitarian work in southern Iraq before, during and after the war), which included use of Groove software and communication tools, remote sensing and sensor visualization done to assist in winning the peace in the theatre.

Shadow operations with DoD around DARPA effort in desert, DARPA Grand Challenge, doing medical, environmental, sensor networks and command and control. Parallel effort to DARPA project is funded by DoD (Lin Wells) to do rapid prototyping for civ/mil interactions in Iraq. This parallel project (Operation Desert Bloom) is led by Dr. Dave Warner and involves SDSU Viz Center and professional staff working both at SDSU and MindTel. SRA is providing secure portal (CyberCop) for delivering data sets to both secure and non-secure environments.

FairSher effort doing rapid response with San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, led by Bob Welty---close working relationship with Sheriff’s Department, especially Wireless Communication Division.

Linkage into Law Enforcement community and security and privacy issues, which we address through close cooperation with several Public Safety groups to connect their Intranet to our Data Fusion efforts in the Viz Center.

Ability to use classified and unclassified data and people is possible because of the mix of people with clearances and the proximity of secure installations at SSC-SD.

· We are the unofficial R & D group of the County HazMat and HIRT (Hazardous Incident Response Team) who are the primary responders to bio-terrorism incidents. We are working with them to help provide appropriate technologies for using wireless cameras, effective but inexpensive visualization center linked to five response trucks, and multiple communication devices and protocols.

Connection with Health and Human Services and portable hospital and decontamination facilities for the county---work linking county facilities with SDSU through College of Health and Human Services and Graduate School of Public Health and Nursing Department.

Connection with WIISARD project and developing technologies through many branches of Cal-(IT)². Dr. Leslie Lenert and Ramesh Rao are leads on this project, which will be developing new technologies and protocols that can be integrated into Bionet as the project progresses. http://www.calit2.net/research/labs/features/12-2_wiisard.html

5. Communication by wired, optical and wireless and hybrid ways of communicating from command and control centers to field and back

Optical networks such as OptIPuter for sending data, link into national lambda rail provide experimental networks that can be used in times of emergency but also used to test and train. OptIPuter (http://www.optiputer.net) is led by Larry Smarr, Director of Cal-(IT)² and represents the commodity Internet of several years away, which is available now for both experimentation and optimization for uses such as civ/mil emergencies.

TIDES (Tran-lingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization) server and delivery to people using key words for epidemiology. Summary of this information mining from about 80 news sources is sent to subscribers such as White House and National Security Council each day. Focus is on epidemiology and humanitarian themes such as SARS. http://www.carebridge.info TIDES server was housed for most of last year at SDSU Viz Center.

Videoconferencing tools using a spectrum of applications like Wave3 Session software, Stanford’s VSEE software, and CalTech’s VRVS software as collaboration tools to connect people and projects and applications to each other. We use many of these tools together to help link people in as many ways as possible.

· MSCMC in Washington (http://www.mscmc.org) is a collaborator in visualizations and response to national emergencies. The Multi-Sector Crisis Management Consortium, which was developed by NCSA under leadership of Larry Smarr, is a site and organization with which we are working to develop Homeland Security tools and protocols. Bob Welty is giving a presentation about San Diego Homeland Security efforts on Thursday, Feb. 26.

Wireless technologies for mobile response. San Diego and Washington are the only two cities nationally that have 3G (third generation) wireless capabilities, although Verizon has announced that it will be deploying the system nationally. The San Diego system is more robust than the Washington system, making San Diego the best place in the country today to develop emergency response capabilities with the system that will be nationwide within a short time. We are working with both Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm with their systems on projects such as the County HazMat team and SDSU Public Safety, who are using the system to provide capability to mobile command and control efforts. The system will work at speeds over 70 mph, providing response capabilities that can be greatly developed by working with first responders such as ambulance, fire, police, and border patrol.

Connection to CalTrans and efforts to use fiber along the freeways, cameras and sensors for public safety. We are working with CalTrans to find uses for their fiber network along freeways and 200 cameras in the San Diego area---mostly in the context of sensor networks reporting back to their command and control center, which they share with the California Highway Patrol.

6. Pathogen sensing and response---Bioscience Center being built at SDSU to house Center for Microbial Sciences

Center for Microbial Sciences at SDSU is focused on pathogens, many of which could be used for bio-terrorism. The rapidly growing threats of bio-terrorism, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and emerging infectious diseases has given a major impetus to establish the center. The current President of the American Microbial Society is Stan Maloy, Professor at SDSU and Director of the Center for Microbial Sciences and also the Bioscience Center. They are extremely interested in partnering with Bionet on long-term basis for helping facilitate military/civilian interaction for the purposes of the Bionet project. http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/~smaloy/CMS/

· Anthrax response capability using ozone to clean facilities has been pioneered by one of leading SDSU professors, Murat Gurol, Professor in Environmental Engineering. Ozone kills anthrax, yet can be easily sprayed in buildings without damaging people or contents. Her techniques can be deployed as a specific response to bio-terrorism events involving anthrax. She is also developing other tools for other threats. http://www.homelandsecurity.sdsu.edu/detail.php?id=49

· Local companies doing anthrax response---as for Capitol building (Haley & Aldrich) who are partners in developing protocols and use of wireless technologies. Haley & Aldrich are partners in developing wireless response and mapping capabilities, as well as in Homeland Security efforts overall.

Biohazard Safety Level 3 laboratory will be built at SDSU, with groundbreaking in June. This facility could become part of the Bionet program and would provide San Diego lab to do work related to Bionet on long-term basis. Plans for the building are still alterable, so space can be assigned specifically to this project. Stan Maloy and Judith Zyskind are Directors of the Bioscience Center.

7. Epidemiology training and exercises and linkage to response/Homeland Security systems, medical connection

Epidemiology tabletop exercise expertise for civilian/military interaction by medical doctor teaching Epidemiology and involved in Homeland Security Masters Degree program, former doctor of Marines stationed at SPAWAR. Dr. Stephanie Brodine, MD, Professor of Public Health and Navy doctor working with Marines has robust tabletop exercise that might form basis for Bionet tabletop. http://www.homelandsecurity.sdsu.edu/detail.php?id=40 for training work on bio-terrorism in progress and http://www.homelandsecurity.sdsu.edu/detail.php?id=38 for Public Health training in general that is applicable to Homeland Security.

Homeland Security Masters program with focus on HHS----training for DTRA system with accreditation and ability to use network and delivery system for training people. Dean of Health and Human Services, Dean Dolores Wozniak, is also co-chair of Regional Network of Homeland Security set up by Congressman Duncan Hunter and Congresswoman Susan Davis here in San Diego, both of whom endorse the linkage of military with civilian capabilities for emergency response. http://www.homelandsecurity.sdsu.edu

Medical visualization and working with doctors---Jeff Sale for years of working with medical visualization and medical doctors and Dr. Dave Warner for linking medical doctoring with IT in his own work---two leading workers in medical visualization.

Strong Angel and Strong Angel II examples of the use of medical information in rigorous and hostile environment with visualizations to help manage civ/mil operations and remote interaction. Dr. Eric Rasmussen, Fleet Surgeon for the US 3^rd Fleet, is an Adjunct Faculty member at SDSU working with the Viz Center and is the lead for Strong Angel II in early summer 2004. Dr. Rasmussen, Dr. Warner, and Bob Younger of SSC-SD (now with DHS) were leaders in the first Strong Angel, which was done with RIMPAC in 2000.

Strong Angel II might be useful prototype to use (June-July) and analyze prior to Table Top exercise for Bionet

8. Linkage to standards in geospatial, communication, visualization enabling us to link to other software and databases and sensor input

GEON, (http://www.geongrid.net) which is major NSF project ($11.5 million over five years) to write XML wrappers around all geospatial data, is providing means to link nearly all geospatial data for regions such as the Mid-Atlantic (includes Washington) and western US from Canada to Mexico. These two major research efforts could be utilized as a partial solution of linking nearly all geospatial data together and delivering via the web. Cal-(IT)2 is major part of the GEON project, which is headquartered at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Standards established by GEON are likely to be the major standards toward which all mapping software will migrate, making these standards extremely useful for building Bionet geospatial software and translators between software and databases.

Mars server and other major educational projects have been built with cutting-edge open source tools such as Zope, Plone, and zMapServer. These tools, which John Graham is a major developer and advocate, provide a highly functional and robust means of rapidly deploying and updating collaboration, project management, mapping, and database query tools via the web. http://wits.sdsu.edu:8181/projects/

9. Delivery to web of materials at rate of millions of hits per day----Mars visualizations that are currently being delivered can be quickly replaced by Bionet products for delivery to millions of people a day.

Mars data as template for high-volume, high-bandwidth data delivery. SDSU and SDSC sites (http://www.telascience.org) and (http://wits.sdsu.edu) have been delivering millions of versions of 20 MB file that drives the NASA Rover to the web. Imminent giveaway of the GeoFusion Mars flythrough software (starting at end of Feb., 2004) will provide hopefully millions of downloads per day of 200Mb or 2Gb files from our servers. This infrastructure of computational engines and dedicated network bandwidth can be instantly switched out on command to provide similar capabilities to download huge data volumes to county health offices or general public.

Internet of the future is based on optical transport in new ways, many of which are being tried out by the Cal-(IT)² research team led by Larry Smarr that is funded by NSF Information Technology Research project called the OptIPuter. OptIPuter is Internet of about three years from now and enables the use of large volumes of data, such as situational awareness Earth imagery, to be sent interactively around the world. http://www.optiputer.net describes some of the work, which includes many of the Cal-(IT)² teams studying Earth Science and medical imagery. Networks developed for this work could be used as dedicated bandwidth for testing of Bionet capabilities and for use during events.

National Lambda Rail is national fiber network connecting different major cities in the US, including San Diego, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington, and Houston---which is an experimental network that could be used for Bionet events and training. http://www.nationallambdarail.org) Cal-(IT)² was major group helping organize and empower this effort, which could be linked to Bionet use by agreement with NSF.

Network capability at SDSC (http://www.sdsc.edu) provides high-end node to Internet backbone, so that delivery of data via the Internet can be done at both high bandwidths and high capacity. Capabilities are connected to multiple other sites, so no single point of failure.