3rd IEEE Workshop on Situation Management (SIMA 2007)

at MILCOM 2007

Orlando, Florida, Oct 30, 2007

FINAL PROGRAM

Keynote Address

Electronic Chronicling Technologies for Enhanced Situational Awareness

Dr. Gopal Pingali

IBM T. J. Watson Research Center

Hawthorne, New York, USA

Abstract: We live today in an era where people have unprecedented ability to capture and share their experiences via lightweight mobile multimodal sensors including audio, image, video, global positioning, digital compass, and physiological sensors. However, sharing experience is just the beginning - there is tremendous potential to convert rich shared experiences into enhanced situational awareness in network centric operations. A soldier augmented with a mobile sensor information system opens up a vista of possibilities from the perspective of gathering intelligence from the theater, providing soldiers on the field with relevant information in real time, and transferring experience from one operation to the next. This involves

  • Analysis of unprecedented volumes of rich media from different sensors
  • Representation of complex, uncertain, and evolving information e.g., human networks
  • Fusion into a common operational picture
  • Mining of patterns and trends
  • Intuitive presentation - to the soldier in the field and an officer in a command center - to enable decision making
  • The main challenge in such sensor information systems is to effectively assimilate the information being captured by diffuse and distributed soldiers into a coherent model of the theater of operations resulting in enhanced situational awareness and actionable intelligence. Technologies for understanding sensor events in conjunction with modeling, search and visualization can be used to effectively minimize the "explicit annotation" of data and enable the extraction and sharing of experience between soldiers, intelligence officers, and across successive operations.

    We will present our ideas on tools that enable people to create rich multimedia electronic chronicles of their experiences. An electronic chronicle is an extended account of events, including physical, transactional, and contextual material presented in chronological order. The electronic chronicle can be presented in the form of a virtual time-machine that allows review of important episodes, helps gain insights, and provides mission-critical information through hypothesis evaluation and early warning. Online interfaces to electronic chronicles can provide in-situ situational information and review of important episodes to soldiers in the field. Offline interfaces provide situational understanding and views of the theater of operations from different perspectives and at different times.

    Speaker Biography: Dr. Gopal Pingali heads the Experience Management (XPM) Research group within the Services Research Division at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. The XPM group researches the capture, representation, analysis, sharing, and presentation of experience in a particular situation or problem solving context. We are interested in the digital representation of experiences of individuals and the aggregation of experiences across social networks to dynamically identify best practices and expertise. Gopal has been applying XPM to military operations, contact centers, end user services, and mobile workforces.

    Gopal received his Ph.D. from University of Michigan in 1993 and was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs till 2001, before he joined IBM Research. His work has spanned real-time visual and audio-visual tracking of human activity, pervasive multimedia technologies, contextual interfaces, and nanotechnology. Gopal received the Mark Weiser Best Paper Award at the IEEE Pervasive Computing Conference in 2003, the Best Industry Related Paper Award from the International Association for Pattern Recognition in 2000, and the 2003 Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper Award in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematics at IBM Research.

    At IBM Research, Gopal was recently Principal Investigator for the DARPA sponsored project on "Electronic Chronicling with Advanced Soldier Sensory Information System and Technology (ECASSIST)" which included a multi-disciplinary team from IBM Research, Georgia Tech, MIT, and University of California at Irvine. He also led a team at IBM Research that introduced steerable interfaces for smart environments.

    While at Bell Labs, Gopal developed real-time multi-camera people tracking systems and applied them to retail and financial environments. This technology was spun off into a new venture for video surveillance. Gopal also developed LucentVision, a system for enhancing the experience of sports on television and the web through real-time player and ball tracking, and new 3D interactive virtual replays and visual mining of style and strategy. This system was extensively used in tennis broadcasts by major television networks all over the world and several of its features have now become standard in tennis broadcasts.

    Gopal has published over 50 papers in journals, book chapters, and conferences, and has over 25 patent applications issued or filed. He is currently active in the Pervasive Computing and Multimedia communities. He chaired several ACM workshops on Telepresence between 2002 and 2004, chaired the First IEEE Workshop on Electronic Chronicles in 2006, and was the co-general chair of the IEEE Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications in 2007 (PerCom'07). He was Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, and is currently Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing and Communications.



    9:15 - 9:20 SESSION: Opening Remarks
    General Chair: Dr. Gabriel Jakoboson, Altusys
    TPC Co-Chair: Dr. John Buford, Avaya Labs Research
    TPC Co-Chair: Dr. John Salerno, AFRL
    9:20-10:30 SESSION: Keynote
    Electronic Chronicling Technologies for Enhanced Situational Awareness
    Dr. Gopal Pingali
    IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
    Hawthorne, New York, USA
    10:40-12:00 SESSION: Domain Models and Frameworks
    Session Chair: Dr. Lundy Lewis, SNHU
    SIMA-1.1
    Presenting the Story Behind the Data: Enhancing Situational Awareness Using Multimedia Narrative
    Steven Wark, Defence Science & Technology Organization
    Dale Lambert, Defence Science & Technology Organization

    SIMA-1.2
    Model Based Framework for Implementing Situation Management Infrastructure
    Rajeev Gopal, Hughes Network Systems

    SIMA-1.3
    Intelligence Exchange (IntellEx)
    Adam Stotz, CUBRC
    Moises Sudit, University at Buffalo

    SIMA-1.4
    Context Aware Information Retrieval for Enhanced Situation Awareness
    Ali Bahrami, The Boeing Company Phantom Works
    Jun Yuan, The Boeing Company Phantom Works
    Paul Smart, University of Southampton
    Nigel Shadbolt, University of Southampton

    SIMA-1.5
    Adaptive Markov Game Theoretic Data Fusion Approach for Cyber Network Defense
    Dan Shen, Intelligent Automation, Inc.
    Genshe Chen, Intelligent Automation, Inc.
    Erik Blasch, AFRL/SNAA
    George Tadda, AFRL/IFEA
    2:15 - 3:35 SESSION: Fusion and Data Collection for Situation Management
    Session Chair: Dr. John Salerno, AFRL
    SIMA-2.1
    Web-Service Based Distributed System for Decision Support in Emergency Situations
    Alexander Smirnov, SPIIRAS
    Tatiana Levashova, SPIIRAS
    Mikhail Pashkin, SPIIRAS
    Andrew Krizhanovsky, SPIRAS
    Alexey Kashevnik, SPIIRAS
    Anna Komarova, SPIIRAS
    Nikolay Shilov, SPIIRAS

    SIMA-2.2
    A Qualia Framework for Awareness in Cyberspace
    Timothy Lacey, U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology
    Robert Mills, U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology
    Richard Raines, U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology
    Paul Williams, U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology
    Steven Rogers, U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology

    SIMA-2.3
    Cognitively-Inspired Motion Pattern Learning & Analysis Algorithms for Higher-Level Fusion and Automated Scene Understanding
    Brad Rhodes, BAE Systems AIT
    Neil Bomberger, BAE Systems AIT
    Majid Zandipour, BAE Systems AIT
    Allen Waxman, BAE Systems AIT
    Michael Seibert, BAE Systems AIT

    SIMA-2.4
    Delay Tolerant Dynamic Data Collection Over a Sensor Network
    Serge Chaumette, Labri, Université Bordeaux 1
    Lionel Barrere, Labri, Université Bordeaux 1
    Cyril De Peretti, Labri, Université Bordeaux 1
    3:35-5:00 SESSION: Taking Action and Adapting Through Situation Management
    Session Chair: Dr. John Buford, Avaya Labs Research
    SIMA-3.1
    A Methodology to Glean Demographics from Open Sources to Support Commanders in Unfamiliar Urban Areas
    Bob Dourandish, Quimba Software
    Nina Zumel, Quimba Software

    SIMA-3.2
    Situational Awareness for Enhanced Incident Management (SAFE-IM)
    Mike Walter, BAE Systems

    SIMA-3.3
    Decision Management
    Joseph Antonik, Air Force Research Laboratory

    SIMA-3.4
    Decision Support for Crowd Control: Using a Genetic Algorithms With Simulation to Learn Control
    Johan Schubert, Swedish Defence Research Agency
    Robert Suzic, Swedish Defence Research Agency

    SIMA-3.5
    Optimizing Application Performance Through Learning and Cooperation in a Wireless Sensor Network
    Wai-Leong Yeow, National University of Singapore
    Chen-Khong Tham, National University of Singapore
    Wai-Choong Wong, National University of Singapore