Nabil R. Adam

Geospatial Data Management with Terrafly

Disasters, whether environmental or manmade, have catastrophic impacts that require both quick action and long-term interventions. Mitigating the effects of those disasters requires knowledge about similar events and advanced disaster planning. Major challenges in disaster planning and intervention include a lack of up-to-date information on situational and environmental conditions, major communication gaps, and a lack of effective coordination in planning and recovery operations.

Developing a common analytical framework for models, simulations, and data

DHS has recently established the Analytic Capability Development Working Group (ACDWG) whose aim is to reduce the lifecycle and capital investment costs of analytic efforts while continually enhancing the ability to inform decision-makers within mandated timeframes. Specifically, the working group is helping to develop a common analytic frameworks in order to address the challenges that users and developers of analytic tools face, including increasing awareness around existing analytical capabilities, spurring collaborations that reduce stove-piping and duplication of analytic effort, creating consistent, transparent, defensible, and shared knowledge, and streamlining development efforts at all levels. In this talk we discuss some of the challenges of developing a common analytic framework including models, simulations, and data.

Information sharing infrastructure for pharmaceutical supply chain management in emergency response

For an effective and timely acquisition, deployment, and distribution of needed drugs in emergencies, it is crucial to provide the end-to-end visibility of the pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) to the involved parties. Recently, the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has developed a standard-based framework for maintaining and sharing of the emergency data, called Unified Incident Command Decision Support (UICDS). UICDS provides an infrastructure for information sharing among the disparate organizations responding to an emergency. In this paper, we leverage the UICDS infrastructure, and extend it to enable information sharing for pharmaceutical supply chain management in emergency response.

Development of a Consortium for Water Security and Safety: Planning for an Early Warning System

The events of September 11, 2001 have raised concerns over the safety and security of the Nations critical infrastructure including water and waste water systems. In June 2002, the U.S. EPAs Region II Office (New York City), in response to concerns over water security, in collaboration with Rutgers University agreed to establish a Regional Drinking Water Security and Safety Consortium (RDWSSC). Members of the consortium include: Rutgers Universitys Center for Information Management, Integration and Connectivity (CIMIC), American Water (AW), the Passaic Valley Water Commission (PVWC), the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission (NJDWSC), the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies, Region II Office. In December of 2002 the consortium members signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to pursue activities to enhance regional water security. Development of an early warning system for source and distributed water was identified as being of primary importance by the consortium.