Transcript UICDS Kick Off

Introduction
Chip Mahoney, P. E.
Project Manager, Unified Incident
Command and Decision Support
(UICDS)
Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC)
UICDS Sponsor: Larry Skelly
Department of Homeland Security
Science & Technology Directorate,
Infrastructure & Geophysical Division
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UICDS is the “middleware foundation” that enables National Response Framework
(NRF) and National Information Management System (NIMS), including Incident
Command Structure (ICS), information sharing and decision support among
commercial and government incident management technologies used across the
country to prevent, protect, respond, and recover from natural, technological, and
terrorist events
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The UICDS Architecture Specification that describes standards and data model for
technology providers to adapt their products and share information
A pilot reference implementation that is a real-world, operational test environment
and development kit for technology providers to use to adapt their products
A national outreach program to expand awareness of the role of technology in
homeland security
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Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure
© 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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What Is the Process That You and/or Your Company Use to
Ensure That Your Product Meets the Needs of the End-user?
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Derived from from nationally recognized policy-level documents
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National Information Management System (NIMS)
National Response Framework (NRF)
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Open, non-proprietary, standards-based design and interfaces
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Identification of end-user needs and technology provider capabilities via a national
outreach program
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End user subject matter experts (internal and external)
Government (early focus on federal, transition to states and locals)
Technology providers (commercial off-the-shelf, government off-the-shelf, universities)
Evolutionary development with continual feedback into the system design and
implementation
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Software engineering process that results in:
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Architecture -> demonstration -> pilot -> deployment
Early demonstration of system feasibility
Multiple opportunities for the end-user assessment
Multiple builds build on previous operational concept
Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure
© 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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What Are Some of the Challenges Associated With This
Process?
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Technical challenges
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Operational challenges
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Information-sharing desires vary
Local capabilities, needs and constraints vary
Local investments in technology vary
Programmatic challenges
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Large number of integrations (jurisdictions, sites, applications)
No single solution for information sharing – multiple networks and interfaces
Peer-to-peer coordination versus centralized command and control
Evolving technologies and standards and applications
Local acceptance of a federally funded capability
Competing end-user feedback
Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure
© 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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And Does This Process Vary Depending on Whether the
Customer/Client Is a Government Agency Versus a Commercial
Company?
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UICDS outreach focuses on both government organizations and technology providers
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UICDS Technology Providers (commercial off-the-shelf and government off-the-shelf
vendors, universities) via regular communications
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Government organizations (federal, state, tribal, local, non-government organizations) via
meetings, briefings, demos and UICDS pilot participation
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Federal (including Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Defense,and FEMA and Health
and Human Services)
State/local (including UICDS pilot in Virginia, All Hazards Consortium)
NGOs (including power companies, universities, aid matrix)
Conferences and workshops provide a confluence of government and UICDS Technology
Providers
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Biweekly telecons (20 – 40 participants) with specific technical topics and coordination of upcoming
events and opportunities
Regular emails (approximately 900 on the mailing list, approximately 240 active, approximately 90
DevKit users, 30 demo participants)
Recent examples include UCore Users Group, NIEM/OASIS Conference, International Association of
Emergency Managers (IAEM) Conference, Public Safety Innovation Center (PSIC), EMWS09
www.UICDS.us provides an interactive platform for UICDS collaboration
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Introductory materials
Document library
Demos
Discussions
Acronyms are defined on page 8.
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Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure
© 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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How Do You Validate or Assess the Efficacy of Your
Technology?
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UICDS efficacy is validated by:
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Improvements in end-user information sharing and decision support capabilities in a standard
fashion (one-to-many integration)
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Number of participating technology providers and jurisdictions/organizations and how they
interact
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Specific quantitative metrics that describe interactions and help validate scalability
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Within a jurisdiction/organization
Across jurisdictions/organizations
Incident frequency and duration
Information sharing numbers, update frequency, file size
Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure
© 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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Are There Industry Standards That Help Define How Well a
Technology Must Perform in Order to Be Effective? If There Are
No Standards, Should There Be?
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Industry standards help facilitate interoperability. Examples include:
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Complexity of systems leads to the use of multiple standards
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Policy level: NIMS/NRF
Information exchanges: NIEM, UCore
Domain-specific standards bodies: OASIS, OGC, LEITSC, IEEE, APCO, ASTM
Overlap and gaps
How standards are implemented is a challenge
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Buy/build: When to use existing standards and when to create a new standard?
System compliance to a standard - complete versus partial – what is enough?
Flexibility for ease of implementation versus “creative differences”
System-specific overhead information
UICDS integrates across multiple standards (and across domains)
Acronyms are defined on page 8.
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Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure
© 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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Visit Us at www.UICDS.us
DHS S&T Program Manager:
Lawrence E. Skelly
[email protected]
DHS S&T Technical Lead:
Nabil R. Adam, Ph.D.
[email protected]
DHS S&T Program Support:
Tomi` Finkle
[email protected]
UICDS Project
Community Outreach Director
James W. Morentz, Ph.D.
(703) 589-3706
[email protected]
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UICDS Project
Project Manager
Chip Mahoney
(917) 574-7356
[email protected]
Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure
© 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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Acronyms
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APCO = Association of Public Safety Communications
Officials
ASTM = American Society of Testing and Materials
CAP = Common Alerting Protocol
COTS = Commercial Off The Shelf
DHS = Department of Homeland Security
DOJ = Department of Justice
EDXL = Emergency Data Exchange Language
EDXL-DE = EDXL Distribution Element
EDXL-RM = EDXL Resource Messaging
EMWS09 = Workshop on Emergency Management:
Incident, Resource, and Supply Chain Management
FEMA = Federal Emergency Management Agency
GOTS = Government Off The Shelf
GeoRSS = an emerging Web feed standard for
encoding location
HHS = Health and Human Services
ICS = Incident Command System/Structure
IEEE = Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
LEITSC = Law Enforcement Information Technology
Standards Council
MACS = Multi-Agency Coordination System
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NIEM = National Information Exchange Model
NIMS = National Information Management System
NGO = Non-Government Organization
NRF = National Response Framework
OASIS = Organization for the Advancement or
Structured Information Standards
OGC = Open Geospatial Consortium
PSIC = Public Safety Innovation Center
SAFECOM = a DHS communications program
SIOC = Strategic information and operations center
SME = Subject Matter Expert
SOAP = Simple Object Access Protocol
ST = Science and Technology
UICDS = Unified Incident Command and Decision
Support
UCore = Universal
ULEX = Universal Lexical Exchange
VA = Virginia
Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure
© 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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