FINAL WORKSHOP 1 REPORT 

(110 pages 4 MB)

FINAL WORKSHOP 2 REPORT 

(83 pages 5 MB)

Supported by the 

National Science Foundation

Co-Sponsored by the
Multi-Sector Crisis Management Consortium

and

The University of Maine

 
The ACCESS Center

ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, ANYSIZE, ANY SIGNAL:

Scalable Remote Information Sensing and Communication Systems

January 14-15, 2002
ACCESS Center
Arlington, VA

OVERVIEW OF WORKSHOP

It is with the possibility of identifying such potential synergies that the Multi-Sector Crisis Management Consortium (MSCMC) is organizing a series of workshops to discuss the design, development and deployment of such systems "From Sensor to Supercomputer and Back: Systems for Information Collection, Aggregation, Analysis, Assessment and Realtime Simulation." MSCMC is presenting this workshop as is one of the first steps to begin exploring these synergies.

The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the current and projected states of the art for sensor, communication and power technologies for collection and communication of information from distributed sensor systems with large numbers of nodes, and to survey the present and expected needs for such systems in environmental, facility, medical, crisis management, public safety and homeland security arenas. A succinct summary of the current and projected technologies mapped to current and projected user requirements is envisioned to result from this workshop.

This workshop will bring together experts in field sensor, processing, wireless, field power source technologies, to structure solutions for the common problem of collecting and communicating data, including from remote field locations, by cost-effective, scalable, integrated devices and networks.

The workshop will examine the user needs and technologies involved in field deployable systems for information gathering including sensors, wireless communications and power supplies, up to the local aggregation point. While the integration of "locally" gathered information into larger infrastructures for purposes of analysis is also required, such integration is beyond the specific focus of this workshop.

It is intended that this two day workshop will produce:

1. An understanding by participants of the current state of the art and availability of technologies of sensors, power, integrated circuits, and wireless, and how they may be employed in our society.
2. A determination of current and future needs for better capabilities
3. Suggested courses of action to integrate available technologies into scalable, reliable, cost-effective devices and networks of value to meet those needs, including for both the general scientific and research community and to government agencies seeking better ways to protect the public from chemical and biological incidents
4. Proposed designs and production of devices not now available or suitable for the above purposes
5. Recommendations for regulatory relief, especially for design, manufacture, and use of workshop-proposed wireless technologies for the above purposes
6. Recommendations for further work in these ares, and identification of potential collaborations and partners.

PROGRAM

The first day consisted of half-hour presentations by users presenting some key needs and successes, and by technologists describing the state of the art and future developments. The second day was dedicated to creating a report describing the state of this field and the key steps that must be taken in order to make progress.

Note about the Videos: The videos below can be played with either a Quicktime Player or a Real Player. You can either play them directly from the website or download them (use the right button with Windows machines and select the "Save Target as..." option). You will probably get better results by downloading the videos you are interested in and playing them directly on your machine. The main videos are 25-35 MB in length and the Q&A videos are in the 5 MB to 10 MB range. 

In most cases there was a clean separation between the presentation and the Q&A session that followed. In these cases you will see two videos listed. In some cases, there was no clean break so we just left everything in one video. The running time of the presentation and the Q&A session is just about 30 minutes in each case.

Day 1

PART I -- USER PERSPECTIVES

8:00 -- 8:15 Coffee, Registration

 

8:15 -- 8:20 Welcome -- Syed Qadir
Chair, Multi-Sector Crisis Management Consortium
Executive Director, National Response Center

 

Slides Video

 

8:20 -- 8:30 Opening Remarks -- George Markowsky
Chair Department of Computer Science
Department of Mathematics/Statistics
University of Maine
Secretary, Multi-Sector Crisis Management Consortium

Slides  Video

8:30 -- 9:00 Crisis Management -- Capt. Dennis Egan
Chief, Office of Command Control and Preparedness
US Coastguard
Member, Multi-Sector Crisis Management Consortium

Slides Video Q&A Video

9:00 -- 9:30 Biological & Ecological Sciences -- Tim Kratz
Associate Director for Trout Lake Station Center for Limnology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Slides Video Q&A Video 

9:30 -- 10:00 Environmental Monitoring & Public Safety -- Neil Gray
Executive Director
International Bridge, Tunnel, Turnpike Authority

Slides Video Q&A Video  

10:00 -- 10:30 Break

10:30 -- 11:00 Facility Monitoring -- Richard Holm
Reactor Administrator
Nuclear Reactor Laboratory
University of Illinois

Slides Video Q&A Video

11:00 -- 11:30 Communications -- David Hughes
Partner
Old Colorado City Communications

Slides Video  Q&A Video

11:30 -- 12:00 The Big Picture -- Larry Smarr
Professor
Computer Science and Engineering Department
University of California San Diego
Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
Universities of California at San Diego and Irvine

Slides Video

12:00 -- 1:30 Lunch

PART II -- TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVES

1:30 -- 2:00 Sensor Technologies and Applications -- David Nagel
Research Professor
School of Engineering and Applied Science
George Washington University

Slides Video

2:00 -- 2:30 Sensors -- The Present -- Gregory Bonito
Research Assistant
Long Term Ecological Research Network Office

Slides Video Q&A Video

2:30 -- 3:00 Communication Security -- Leslie Owens
Founder and CTO
Vectara Innovations, LLC
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Georgetown University
Technical Editor, Wireless Security Perspectives

Slides Video Q&A Video

3:00 -- 3:30 Break

3:30 -- 4:00 Power -- Robert Nowak
Manager, Advanced Energy Technologies
DARPA

Slides Video Q&A Video

4:00 -- 4:30 Medical Systems -- Jim Wilson
WHO/NASA Ebola/Marburg/VEE Remote Sensing Projects
GDIN Infectious Diseases Working Group - Global Epidemic Intelligence and Disease
Forecasting Systems (GEIFFS)
Pediatrician, Georgetown University

Slides Video Q&A Video

4:30 -- 5:00 Regulatory Issues -- William Lane
Chief Technologist, Wireless Communications Bureau
Federal Communications Commission

Slides Video Q&A Video

5:00 -- 5:15 Closing Remarks -- George Markowsky
Slides  

4:30 -- 5:00 Planning for the Next Workshop & Close -- George Markowsky

IMPACT ON DISCIPLINE
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that such a wide ranging group of scholars and practitioners is being assembled to look at all aspects of sensors and communication systems. This is driven by the unprecedented need to develop both a more robust scientific network and for the needs for greater homeland security. This workshop is also drawing international interest as you can see from the participation by Russian delegates. It is vitally important for us to better understand the capabilities that others have developed in this area.

DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS
Information about the workshop will be presented through a web archive here at http://homeland.cs.umaine.edu and also at http://www.mscmc.org, which is the website of the Multi-Sector Crisis Management Consortium. 

We will soon be posting the proceedings of this workshop here.

We also expect that as a result of this workshop, peer reviewed articles will be produced on the various subjects covered.

Many of the speakers and participants are extremely well-known and influential in their fields of expertise and we expect that the results of the workshop will be disseminated by them in the course of their activities.

SIMILAR WORKSHOPS
The most recent similar workshop was held in San Diego, California on October 29-31, 2001. It was organized by Greg Bonito who is one of the speakers at this conference. Some details about the workshop are presented below.

SCALABLE INFORMATION NETWORKS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT (SINE)
Workshop Overview

The SINE workshop, hosted by the Partnership for Biodiversity Informatics (PBI), will assemble research scientists, directors of field stations and marine laboratories, as well as experts in computational and information sciences to discuss the technical requirements for building local, regional, and national-level networks designed to deliver continuous, integrated high-quality data in real or near real time. Each of these audiences will contribute to and learn from the information exchange. Scientists will share their experiences in expanding site-specific science to broader spatial scales, and will discuss future information infrastructure needs in light of new sensors (field and satellite) and data collection capabilities. Directors of field stations and marine laboratories will ground the workshop in the present-day realities of existing infrastructure and capabilities, and will contribute to a new vision of how field stations and marine laboratories can expand to meet the needs for a national capability for observing and understanding environmental complexity. Computational and information scientists will present state of the art developments in sensor technologies, networking, information delivery, and knowledge generation.
Workshop presentations, discussion, and working group sessions will focus on three topics:
1. Building distributed sensor networks: design and implementation issues.
2. Enabling technologies and user requirements for data and information management and delivery.
3. Building scalable environmental information networks--data, computers, and people.
As environmental research becomes more complex and multidisciplinary, gains in our understanding of ecosystem biocomplexity can be furthered through the application of technologies that improve data management and delivery; enhance modeling and prediction capabilities; and facilitate communication among individuals, environmental sensors, computers, and databases. This workshop will be the first attempt to envision a scalable national environmental information infrastructure that meets the needs of scientists working at local and broader sales, as well as decision-makers and educators that may require information at regional to national scales. Consequently, the discussions and working group reports are anticipated to be of broad interest to many disciplines. To meet this information need, several means will be used to disseminate the workshop products to the broader community.

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