Disaster Prediction Response and Recovery (DisPRR) Australia coming to the RESCUE J. Chris Scott Director, Queensland Laboratory NICTA (National ICT Australia)

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Disaster Prediction Response and Recovery
(DisPRR)Australia coming to the RESCUEJ. Chris
ScottDirector, Queensland LaboratoryNICTA(Natio
nal ICT Australia)
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Outline of Talk

• National ICT Australia (NICTA) background
• NICTA Program Overview
• NICTA/Queensland State Government collaboration
• Safeguarding Australia
• Engagement with State Government agencies
• Initial NICTA Queensland Research Activity
• Disaster Prediction, Response, and Recovery
  (DisPRR)
• DisPRR Research Activity overview
• The Smart Sensors Work Package
• Demonstrator Program
• Collaboration

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NICTA Background

• Commonwealth and State Government funded RD
  centre of excellence in Information and
  Communications Technology
• Laboratories in Sydney (UNSW and ATP), Canberra,
  Melbourne, and Brisbane employing approx 300
  researchers in specialised ICT areas.
• Initially 2 partner Universities now 7
• Combination of strategic Programs focused on more
  Fundamental Research AND tactical Projects aimed
  at delivering outcomes to current user
  requirements
• In addition to Research NICTA focuses on
  Education and Commercialisation
• NICTA Queensland is focusing on
• Safeguarding Australia

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NICTA Programs

• Formal Methods
• Multimedia and Visual Communications
• Autonomous Systems and Sensor Technology
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
• Statistical Machine Learning
• Symbolic Machine Learning and Knowledge
  Acquisition
• Logic and Computation
• Systems Engineering and Complex Systems
• Networks and Pervasive Computing
• Wireless Signal Processing
• Embedded, Real-time, and Operating Systems

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NICTA PhD Program

• Building on traditional education programs
• Generating human capital for ICT research and
  development, of the highest international
  standards
• Value-added degree programs within universities
• Enriching the education experience to enhance
  Australias economy

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NICTAs Network
VCs

Australian Research Community
Industry Development
Entrepreneurs in Residence
Collaborative Projects
Industry forums
VC Networking
Exhibitions Sponsorships
Fellows
Outlook Conference
Industry networking
Breakout days
International Research Community
Members
General Public
Technical Conferences
Conduits to the greater community
Media Imagination Driving Australias ICT
Future
International Visitors
Collaboration
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NICTA Queensland

• Collaboration between NICTA and Queensland State
  Government involving 3 Queensland Universities.
  
• Initial Program of Research involves commitments
  of A14M (US11M) over 3 years
• NICTA Queensland staffing will be more than 50
  researchers and students by Q1 2006- 15 full
  time, 24 contributed, 14 students
• Commitment from Queensland State Government to
  provide user driversaddressing a specific need
  in the general area of e-security including
  issues relating to both natural and man made
  disasters .
• NICTA Queensland commenced operations in January
  2005 andhas funding for an initial period of 3
  years expected to be extended.

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Engagement with Qld State Government Agencies

• Initial focus on establishing priorities from a
  State Government perspective
• Meetings with Agencies including
• Department of Emergency Services Police
  Services Information Queensland State
  Development and Innovation Department of Premier
  and Cabinet
• to extract key issues facing these organisations
• Matched with the capabilities of our three
  Universities Griffith Uni, Queensland
  University of Technology and University of
  Queensland
• Result is a program of RD in the area of
• Disaster Prediction, Response, and Recovery

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Disaster Prediction, Response, and Recovery
Research program

Source of data
Data processing
at source
Modeling and information
processing
Trusted and secure systems
Human factors
Threat assessment by classifying human
behaviours. Understand organisational,
social, cognitive and perceptual
factors affecting the human response
Sensors, surveillance cameras, historical
data, remotely sensed data
Devices as autonomous agents video/audio data
processing, incident classification
Relationships and dependencies in over
constrained systems. Issue of trust in decision
support. Data fusion
Trusted computing base for low cost
microprocessor based devices, high
assurance end-to-end secure dynamic
reconfigurable network
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WP2 Information and Human Behaviour

• Information Management including modeling,
  representation, and integrating information and
  situations from multiple sources into a cohesive
  framework to support decision making
• Investigate issues related to human-system
  integration for disaster prevention, response and
  recovery, focusing on eliciting and modeling the
  role and information needs of human responders
• Observation and modeling of human behaviours to
  enable algorithm development for implementation
  in WP1
• Tasks
• Scenario Requirements
• Formal Representation of Information
• Formal Representation of Human Activities
• Information Integration
• Decision Making Framework
• Information Framework Architecture
• Abnormal Human Behaviour classification
• Usability Studies

Level 0/1 - Data/Object Sources Level 2 -
Situational Awareness Level 3 - Threat/Impact
Assessment
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WP3 Modeling Agents

• This research addresses the formal modeling and
  understanding of dynamically changing
  environments in emergency and disaster services
• The aim is to formally represent and effectively
  reason about real-world situations that involve
  over-constrained resources, risk factors, and
  real-time decision making
• The focus on trustworthiness will provide
  coherence for cutting-edge research on
  logic-based knowledge representation,
  constraints, spatial and temporal reasoning and
  search
• Tasks
• Solving Decision Problems
• Representation and Reasoning with Ontologies
• Reasoning with spatial-temporal information
• Handling Over-Constrained Problems

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WP4 Trusted Systems

• This research will determine solutions for
  trusted computing bases to support reliable and
  secure management of response systems charged
  with the protection of critical data
• This will address the needs of higher layers of
  an information and data network system where such
  systems are to be used in emergency response,
  critical infrastructure and national information
  infrastructure protection
• Tasks
• Software development components in a high
  trust/embedded system
• Security/trust factors in embedded/microkernel
  systems
• Cryptography integration into embedded kernels
• Impact on Performance of security functions
• Trusted pathways in embedded systems
• Safety against attack

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WP5 Secure and Autonomic Networks

• Research will be undertaken into, and develop
  prototype structures for, high assurance
  end-to-end secure emergency response information
  services within a critical infrastructure
  environment with an emphasis on the necessary
  network components, context management, and
  autonomic networks
• This research will also consider dynamic
  monitoring and reconfiguration of networks and
  methods to identify the disaster/attack impact
  zone based on monitoring and context information
• Tasks
• Modeling of context information
• Scalable and resilient management of context
  information
• Autonomic network/communication reconfiguration
• System/application monitoring
• Secure dynamic wireless communications
• Trust Policy

• Dynamic self-reconfiguration of network to
  achieve optimum level of communication in spite
  of failure/attack
• Identification of failure/attack impact zone on
  network/system

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WP1 Smart Sensors

• Sensors for early warning and post incident
  response
• Smart networked surveillance cameras
• Distributed strain sensing for structural damage
  assessment
• Personnel location and tracking
• Network monitoring

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Smart networked surveillance cameras

• Multi resolution high speed digital camera
  architectures and a platformusing FPGA system on
  a chip technology
• Fibre based acoustic detection arrays robust
  acoustic event recognition
• Embedded software enabling cooperative sensor
  function andoperation as autonomous agent in a
  network of devices
• Platform for assessing real-time algorithms for
  face and character (number plate) recognition
  using the best algorithms available.
• 3D models from WP2 to assess behaviour and
  identify possible threats
• Rapid searching of realtime and archivedevents

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Fibre Bragg Gratings for distributed and point
strain sensing

• Together with Industry partner (Redfern Optical
  Components) develop high precision broad band
  strain gauges for structural stress monitoring.
• Fibre Bragg Gratings for point and integrated
  strain measurement

n, core
z
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Distributed strain sensing for structural damage
assessment

Distributed strain and temperature
Laser
Coupler
Detector
FBG Filter
Point strain and temperature
Optical fibre in structure to be measured many
kms
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Other Sensors within WP1
Personnel location and tracking under emergency
conditions

• Tracking emergency services personnel in
  hostile environments
• Extension of existing Emergency communication
  equipment for location function
• Ultra wideband wireless and
• Location based services (E-LBS) are being
  assessed
• Integrated with GPS referenced base stations

Network monitoring for impact assessment

• Monitor network elements to asses functionality
• Monitor network applications response
• Map extent of physical effect of incident

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Demonstrator

• DisPRR will demonstrate prototype systems,
  bringing together various components from the RD
  program to demonstrate key developments in a yet
  to be determined significant area of
  application.
• NICTA is working with its stakeholders
  toidentify demonstrator applications that will
  utilise successful outcomes from the Project
• Discussions with various Queensland Gov Agencies
  are currently underway to identify a
  demonstrator application initial focus
• NICTA is following with interest RESCUEs
  Testbed Program Transportation, CAMAS, and
  GLQ, and is interested in collaborating in at
  least one of these

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Collaboration

• NICTAs mission includes
• being a world class RD organisation
• with a focus on user inspired outcomes
• for Safeguarding Australia
• Collaboration with experts worldwide will enable
  DisPRR to deliverbetter outcomes sooner to
  benefit all our stakeholders
• NICTA is interested in collaborating with RESCUE
  because
• Our two projects are very similar in objective
  and execution
• RESCUE has been operating longer than DisPRR and
  is further advanced
• RESCUE, through recent natural disasters, has
  access to data whichwould be invaluable to
  DisPRR
• Queenslands natural threats are similar to the
  more recent US events
• Australias manmade threats are similar to those
  of the US
• We believe DisPRR may have components of value to
  RESCUE

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Contacts

• NICTA Queensland Dr J. Chris Scott chris.scott_at_n
  icta.com.au
• DisPRR Program Dr Renato Iannella renato_at_nicta.c
  om.au
• Smart Sensors Prof Brian Lovell brian.lovell_at_nic
  ta.com.au
• Modeling and Agents Prof Abdul Sattar abdul.satta
  r_at_nicta.com.au
• Trusted Systems Prof Bill Caelli bill.caelli_at_nic
  ta.com.au
• Secure and Autonomic Prof Peter
  Croll peter.croll_at_nicta.com.auNetworks
  Ass. Prof Jaga Indulska jaga.indulska_at_nicta.com.,
  au
• Information and Prof Penny Sanderson
  penny.sanderson_at_nicta.com.au
• Human Behaviour Dr Renato
  Iannella renato_at_nicta.com.au