Network Centric Early Warning System

The overarching objective of this SBIR is to develop a Network Centric Early Warning System (NEWS). NEWS will integrate existing information architectures with data mining applications and intelligent agents to provide predictive, situational awareness capabilities for a set of mobile, distributed users. In order to showcase its utility, the system will be demonstrated in a Mass Causality Exercise to measure changes in the speed and quality of detecting an emerging crisis. Thus, the supporting technical goals of this SBIR are as follows: -- Develop and demonstrate a set of intelligent applications that can detect the early stages of a potential disaster. While this set of applications will be used for a Biosurveillance scenario, the general approach can be extended or adapted for any domain. These applications will be the linchpin of any future commercialization effort, either as a stand-alone product or as a suite of web-services that Public Health organizations can subscribe to. -- Integrate, demonstrate, and deploy an extensible Federated Information Management System which facilitates the efficient interaction of multiple, heterogeneous users and data sources. -- Provide a web-enabled Common Operational Picture that DCC members can utilize to visualize the current situation, epistatic relationships between nodes, emerging trends. -- Prototype a web-enabled mobile communications infrastructure that can support standardized communications between DCC members operating on a variety of different devices (e.g., pagers, cell phones, PDAs). -- Transform information based on role, context, and connectivity characteristics of the individual users. The emphasis here will be on the efficient delivery of high value, time sensitive information, tailored to the specific needs (role) of each user. -- Demonstrate this system using a public health crisis scenario that requires a distributed DCC, with nodes at the local (county), state, and Federal level.