Strong Angel III - social network development

ESRI â€“ Entree Wireless Test Geo-located Handheld Data Collection

DavidAhlgren — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 21:56:41 +0000

08/25/06 - Friday
Sortie Plan
2508 â€“ Point Loma, Data Collection â€“ 2508
Sortie Lead - Myles Sutherland, ESRI, Tom Patterson, ESRI

The Planâ€“ Visit a variety of sites in the Point Loma area. Make local contacts and collect simulated patient data on a variety of GPS enabled handheld devices such as; PDA, Cell phone, laptops. Transmit data to a data center via the Internet using various communication channels including â€“ 1) Cellular Data Network, 2) Wi-Fi using the EVDO/Wi-Fi Bridge.

Data Flow using the EVDO/Wi-Fi Bridge

GPS enabled handheld w/ Wi-Fi >> Entree Wireless battery powered EVDO/Wi-Fi gateway>> Verizon EVDO Data Service >> Internet >> ESRI data center >> Internet >> ESRI Strong Angel Common Operating Picture >> Virtual Agility Strong Angel III Situational Awareness

Report from ShadowLite Command Center â€“ Org Chart, Virtual Agility Situational Awareness Work Center

DavidAhlgren — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 21:16:09 +0000

08/25/06 Friday

Earlier this week I took the ICS/NIMS training and certification class. Today I spent the morning in the ShadowLite Command Center and observed and supported the deployment of multiple sorties to the field to collect demographic data.

The organization chart for Strong Angel / ShadowLite follow the ICS/NIMS model as follows

Strong Angel III Disaster Response Demonstration

PFO - Principle Federal Officer â€“ Eric Rasmussen

Command â€“ This is the facility has overall control of the Incident

IC â€“ Incident Commander, John Gargett
. Command Staff
. . PIO â€“ Press Information Officer, Jamie Imus

Podcasts on SA III

sanjana — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 06:17:50 +0000

There's a number of podcasts I've done with several leading participants at SA III here - http://ict4peace.wordpress.com. Also check out http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/strong-angel-iii for other posts on SA III.

MedWeb â€“ Entree Wireless, Redundant Comms Enhances Mission Beach Sortie

DavidAhlgren — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:32:11 +0000

0823 0930 â€“ Wednesday

Met with Linda Branagan, Director of Research, MedWeb, to talk about the dayâ€™s scenario.

MedWeb is the industry standard for distributed telemedicine solutions and the delivery of Web-enabled, secure Tele-radiology and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS).

They have developed a medical response vehicle with a fully equipped mobile communication center that supports a variety of communication networks including satellite, 3G EVDO data and Wi-Fi.

Today MedWeb is planning a sortie to the mission beach lifeguard station to investigate reports of a number of people with flu like symptoms and identify potential patients that are part of the Asian Flu Pandemic.

8/18/2006

Adam Royce — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 16:22:13 +0000

Was up 'til 2am this mornng getting the Matrox TripleHead2Go running on the Viz Lab's three screen (and very old) ViewStation 36. These are three of those old heavy projectors with the CRT guns (red/green/blue) that display side by side to a single screen. The Matrox product worked pefectly, but aligning those CRTs was quite painful. Anyway, now we can display Google Earth across the entire display. Very cool.

Remember the 'big equipment' I alluded to? Well, so far this morning, I have seen GM's hybrid trucks that have 2400W power supplies in them. You wouldn't even know they had this power capability, as the outlets are under the drivers seat and embedded in the wall of the pickup bed. Ruggedized, and I am told by Cindy Svestka, GM Integration Engineer, Two-mode Hybrid Energy and Drive Quality, that the performance of the vehicle, even with the added electrical system, is identical to its non-enhanced counterpart. As long as the engine is running, there are four standard 120V outlets for use. And this is just the morning!

8/17/2006

Adam Royce — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 03:21:07 +0000

For me, the day was fairly light. Groove had some hiccups, but nothing I had the power to resolve. A known problem involving relay servers, that eventually fixed itself.

Still more hardware coming in, and I am told some of the heavy stuff, the really cool stuff, comes in tomorrow.

Saw an interesting technology today. Special cell phones had been programmed to broadcast their locations via their internal GPS systems to the internet, and then one could watch as the phone moved from location to location. Most modern cell phones are GPS capable, but the companies who supply the service disable the feature. Most phones can also send data, in addition to sound, and it was this data line that was used to transmit information to the Internet. Once on the net, a specially designed site coupled to Google Earth was used to display the phone's location. The site would then update every couple of minutes. It was amazing. You could even see when the phone was inside a building. Only downside I could see was that since the data signal was sent every couple of minutes, the phone was ultimately broadcasting all day. This would decrease battery life. Small price to pay to track the kids though...

8/16/2006 Entry

Adam Royce — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 23:56:40 +0000

My creative side has rebelled against me, and refuses to come up with any more spiffy blog titles. The date it is.

Yesterday saw more equipment coming in, but not too much. Still waiting on the bigger stuff.

I brought in my Matrox TripleHead2Go so we could display on three screens from the output of one video card. If three screens are connected to multiple video cards, any image that uses 3D acceleration will only display on the 'primary' card. This is because multiple video cards do not share the same RAM, or to be more accurate, the same frame buffer. By outputting from a single video card (which typically has only two outputs anyway), a single frame buffer is used. Coupled to Matrox's way cool product, 3D acceleration can occur across three screens.

And so it begins...

Adam Royce — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 19:00:55 +0000

Though SAIII starts next week, yesterday was the beginning of the command staff coming to town.

Felt good to put faces to names, getting to know the leaders of this exercise, and trying hard to be useful.

Took some pictures of some cool technologies (attached), something I will do the entire event.

Seabotix rep Sean Newsome showed us the 'bumblebee', a remote controlled modular submersible with a grapple. John Graham worked a way to remote control it from the Viz Lab. Hope I can see it in action.

Then David Ahlgren, brought in a portable unit that uses a battery during the night, solar during the day to receive inputs from remote sensors, and then transmit through wireless. Uses off-the-shelf hardware, packaged into a small hardened briefcase. Think it is being used by geologists right now as the nexus for a sensornet in a cave.

Welcome to Strong Angel...

rasmussene — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 07:12:31 +0000

...and a fascinating event, and thank you for the interest you've shown in joining us here on this website. My name is Eric Rasmussen and I've been the director for the Strong Angel series for the past seven years. In Strong Angel I lead a remarkable team of people, both the returning core and our new participants. Their efforts - as will be seen within the demonstration in August - will challenge and expand our common understanding of what's possible in disaster preparation, community resilience and humanitarian response.

Strong Angel is an unusual team. We have no formal structure, no dedicated staff, and no official tasking, yet we have a track record that argues that these rare Strong Angel demonstrations have been quite worthwhile. We have, in a few small ways, altered policy, teaching, procedures, and perspectives in several areas around the globe, with ripples that have affected a wide swath of those populations in need since 1999.

This time, for the week of 20-26 August, we'll again have an exceptional collection of very smart, experienced, and impassioned people, flying in from around the world to pursue solutions to complex and persistent problems that really matter; problems that have recurred again and again within both natural and man-made disasters.

It is worth noting that members of the Executive Committee have deployed to more than 20 disasters over the past few years, including the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Kashmir earthquake, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and for the genocide in Darfur. While deployed to these tragedies, we've seen that a poor performance of those tasks we've listed in the Objectives section may cause lives to be degraded, and sometimes lost, through circumstances that might be avoidable.

So, based on recent disasters to which the Executive Committee has responded, we have collected a set of tasks we think need to be performed better when lives are at stake. To be honest, we'll probably perform most of them within the first day or two of the demonstration. From that point on, however, the complexity will increase and resources will be removed, so the challenges will expand considerably. We will work with our teams to devise methods for synthesis and synergy, optimizing our capabilities in each of the response areas we've found important.

It might also be interesting to note that we offer from this work everything we possibly can as a gift to the world, releasing anything that we, ourselves, create to the public domain. That way, a portion of the work so creatively performed during Strong Angel can live on without restriction, available to anyone on the planet, especially those with very limited resources . While we certainly value the proprietary contributions of our many partners and participants, we are very deeply interested in how we share resources (power, water, shelter, software, and news...) effectively with those who have very few; those who are living on the edge and at the margins, most in need of these ideas and capabilities. We should also note that, within the Strong Angel teams, we work aggressively to maintain our own sense of corporate responsibility, carefully respecting copyrights, patents, and intellectual property, while we also, at the same time, strive to develop free and open-source capabilities where we can. It's an unusual approach, but we've found it effective.

On a small side note for those coming to San Diego: If you're willing to take a few moments while you're there, I'd like to personally thank each of you for your contributions. You're all aware that we have very little money, and yet you've each done absolutely astonishing work. It has been terrific to watch. So, if you can, please drop by Building 557 during Strong Angel just for a few moments. You'll find me on the balcony, left side, watching the remarkable events unfold...

Virtual Team Management

jcrowley — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 01:35:37 +0000

BACKGROUND:

In response to a contingency, members of diverse organizations must be able to discover one another, form virtual teams, and work effectively under austere network conditions.

GOALS:

Evaluate at least 3 systems capable of facilitating user discovery, virtual teaming, presence, multi-modal communications, and information sharing among mobile users working over intermittent local area networks.