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Interoperability Research area synopsis: Design and develop standards to enable the exchange of information pertaining to facility, chemical and biological agents, WMD, and other data, between information sources (public and private entities) and E-Plan (a highly secure, web-based, HazMat Information System), as new sites are added in the national fan-out phase of E-Plan; develop filters for translating data between different formats, to increase interoperability between various emergency preparedness tools (e.g., E-Plan, Cameo, Tier II submit). Research team: Professors Gupta (team leader), Raghavachari, and Krishnan Description: Availability of hazardous agent information from fixed facilities and transportation modalities in electronic formats is a critical factor in the success of E-Plan as it is expanded nationwide, and, in the effectiveness of any emergency management information system. Different Local Emergency Planning Commissions (LEPC), city, state and federal agencies differ in the progress made toward making such information available electronically. Some still store data in paper form whereas others have moved to electronic formats based on commonly used spreadsheets, relational databases, HTML, EPA’s Cameo and Tier II Submit, and proprietary systems. Our effort at normalizing this situation will be two-pronged: We will develop standards for electronically entering regulatory information such as required by State Tier II submit procedures, and other critical emergency information, for most of the popular formats identified above. Development of these standards will be a big step towards ensuring that electronic data coming from state and federal agencies, cities, and LEPCs can be imported into E-Plan without requiring major manual work. The culmination of this effort will be the design of an XML based uniform standard for data that can be used by everyone and that will facilitate the building of various useful and interoperable tools by government agencies, private industry, contractors and universities, for facilitating emergency response planning. We will also develop filters between various popular formats so that data can be converted and translated from one form to another. In particular, filters will be built between the format used by E-Plan, Tier II Submit, and Cameo, and the National Response Team’s Integrated Contingency Plan format. This will have the additional advantage that E-Plan will be able to serve as a back-end viewer for data filed through the custom tools. |
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