GIS in Homeland Security: The FGDC Homeland Security Working Group

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GIS in Homeland SecurityThe FGDC Homeland
Security Working Group
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The Homeland Security Mission

• Develop and coordinate the implementation of a
  comprehensive national strategy to secure the
  United States from terrorist threats or attacks
• Work with executive departments and agencies,
  state and local governments, and private entities
  to ensure the adequacy of the national strategy
  to
• Detect potential man-made or natural disasters
• Prepare potential man-made or natural disasters
• Prevent potential man-made disasters
• Protect the nations territory, sovereignty,
  population, and infrastructure from potential
  man-made or natural disasters
• Respond to potential man-made or natural
  disasters
• Recover from potential man-made or natural
  disasters
• Periodically review and coordinate revisions to
  that strategy as necessary

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FGDC Homeland Security Working Group (1 of 2)

• The focal point for identification of metadata,
  symbology, and interface specifications and
  standards for Geospatial Information Technologies
  required for Critical Infrastructure Protection
  (CIP)
• Will encourage input from and coordination with
  other nations and international organizations
• Provides the first responder community with an
  information technology base for conducting
  important planning and exercises, purchasing
  equipment, and training their personnel,
  particularly when involving multiple
  jurisdictions (horizontally and vertically)
• Provides states and localities with the
  information, tools, and flexibility they require
  to ensure that the NSDI can be used to prepare
  for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and
  recover from chemical, biological, radiological,
  or nuclear (CBRN) events

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FGDC Homeland Security Working Group (2 of 2)

• Support for analyses of national borders
  (including crossing points, ports, waterways, and
  airports) to assist in development, refining, and
  monitoring of border agreements -- not dealing
  just with security, but dealing with the
  enhancement of commerce, dealing with drug
  interdiction, dealing with immigration
• Encourages mutual aid across the Nation so that
  the entire local, state, Federal, and volunteer
  network can operate together effectively by
  providing for coordinated information sources and
  common tools
• To make sure that county leaders, major
  metropolitan leaders, and rural leaders are
  capable of developing local plans that
  successfully integrate into state plans that, in
  turn, successfully integrate into and are enabled
  by national plans

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Activities

• Homeland Security Working Group charter lists
  four work areas
• Metadata
• Data Content
• Technical Interfaces
• Symbology
• In order to do these successfully, we also need
• Requirements
• Department of Defense (HIFLD Working Group)
• Federal Government other than DoD
• Domestic, Non-Federal Government
• First responders
• Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) Private
  Volunteer Oganizations (PVOs)
• International Governments/Coalition Partners
• Liaison activities with
• Other FGDC Working Groups to Coordinate
• Federal Government Departments and Agencies
• State and Local Governments
• First Responders
• NGOs PVOs

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Homeland Security WG Activities (1 of 3)

• Develop Use Cases focusing on the use of
  geospatial information for each member
  organization that illustrate the activities
  undertaken relative to
• The deterrence, prevention, and preemption of and
  defense against direct attacks aimed at U. S.
  territory, population, and infrastructure
• Support to civil authorities at all levels of
  government for natural and manmade domestic
  emergencies, civil disturbances, and designated
  law enforcement efforts
• Support to NGOs, PVOs, and individual citizens in
  delivering services to those effected by attacks,
  natural and manmade domestic emergencies, civil
  disturbances, and designated law enforcement
  services.
• Define/Modify Metadata Standards
• Define/Modify Data Content Standards

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Homeland Security WG Use Cases (2 of 3)

• Define/Modify Interface Standards
• In collaboration with the appropriate industry
  standards organization(s), propose modifications
  to or the creation of standardized functional
  specifications that lead to commercial-off-the-she
  lf software products that support the
  manipulation and display of data associated with
  thematic elements required to support Homeland
  Security user activities
• Verification and Validation (VV) of Standards
• Liaison Operations
• Common to most HS WG activities is the need to
  have liaison operations that provide
  communications between participants in the HS WG
  and practitioners of Homeland Security activities
  in all levels of government, including non-US
  governments, and Non-Government Organizations,
  Private Volunteer Organizations, and other
  organizations and associations both domestic and
  foreign. These liaison operations are used to
  provide inputs, solicited and unsolicited, for
  consideration by the HS WG participants. Input
  ranges from Use Cases definition and
  recommendations for action to review and comment
  of HS WG documents, specifications, databases,
  etc.

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Homeland Security WG Use Cases (3 of 3)

• ACTD (Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations)
• When required, participate in prototype and pilot
  implementations with the intent of performing
  verification and validations testing relative to
  modified or new standards
• Prototypes and Pilots
• When required, participate in prototype and pilot
  implementations with the intent of performing
  verification and validations testing relative to
  modified or new standards

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Metadata and Data Content StandardizationThematic
Layers Approach

• Identify and prioritize required thematic layers
• Identify community holdings
• Develop required attributes (including minimal
  pedigree) of data elements
• Develop acquisition strategy for obtaining data
• Design and implement processes and architecture
  to support role

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Thematic Layers
Data Requirements
PDD-63 Sectors
(illustrative)
Layers

• Banking and Finance Utilities, exchanges,
  critical nodes
• Emergency Services Fire stations, law
  enforcement, hospitals
• Health Systems
• Energy Electric power, nuclear, oil and gas
• Information and Comms Internet, phone, broadcast
• Manufacturing HAZMAT, explosives, pharma, retail
• Chemical / HAZMAT
• Miscellaneous Parks, population, zip codes,
  borders
• Agriculture / Livestock Essential government,
  food industry
• National Symbols / Icons
• Mail / Shipping
• Special Functions Defense, IC, State/foreign
  embassy
• Defense
• Transportation Aviation, rail, surface,
  waterborne
• Water Supply Dams, reservoirs, treatment, intakes

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The Geospatial Community Homeland Security Dream
State
Individuals, organizations, and systems of all
user agencies (Federal, state, local, NGOs, etc.)
participating in the Homeland Security
Information System
Tools, services, etc. offered by any
participating agency for the use of all.
Hosting, support, etc., to be provided by the
offering agency or by a commercial service under
contract. A distributed, virtual environment.
Resources offered by any participating agency or
available from commercial providers under
contract. Can range from a simple data server to
a complete legacy system that provides needed
information.
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Some of the Technical Challenges

• Security interoperability in a multi-enclave
  environment
• Service and resource brokering
• Cross-jurisdictional collaborative planning tools
  
• Situation Awareness along jurisdictional
  boundaries
• Incident management for cross-jurisdictional
  operations
• Modeling and simulation for cross-jurisdictional
  operations
• Planning collaboration for cross-jurisdictional
  operations
• Sensor monitoring and indications and warning
• Cooperative use of sensors in multi-jurisdictional
  environments
• Cross-jurisdictional boundary communications
  alignment/realignment using software radio
  technology

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Some Closing Observations

• All countries face the same types of threat --
  only the degree of threat differs
• Threats, man-made and natural, do not respect
  borders
• Sharing of information about the effected area is
  rarely possible among jurisdictions at any level,
  and particularly between levels or jurisdiction
• Local to/from state/province
• A local municipality to/from all surrounding
  municipalities
• Between/among nations
• Response operations assets and recovery aid to
  disasters (man-made or natural) may come from far
  outside the effected jurisdiction
• Other jurisdictions
• NGOs/PVOs
• Treaty organizations (UN, NATO, EU, etc.)
• Most immediate assistance to first-responders is
  usually provided by military or paramilitary
  resources that are for the most part
  operationally incompatible with civilian resources