LunaNet: a Flexible and Extensible Lunar Exploration Communications and Navigation Infrastructure

NASA has set the ambitious goal of establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon. Diverse commercial and international partners are engaged in this effort to catalyze scientific discovery, lunar resource utilization and economic development on both the Earth and at the Moon. Lunar development will serve as a critical proving ground for deeper exploration into the solar system. Space communications and navigation infrastructure will play an integral part in realizing this goal. This paper provides a high-level description of an extensible and scalable lunar communications and navigation architecture, known as LunaNet. LunaNet is a services network to enable lunar operations. Three LunaNet service types are defined: networking services, position, navigation and timing services, and science utilization services. The LunaNet architecture encompasses a wide variety of topology implementations, including surface and orbiting provider nodes. In this paper several systems engineering considerations within the service architecture are highlighted. Additionally, several alternative LunaNet instantiations are presented. Extensibility of the LunaNet architecture to the solar system internet is discussed

Assessing the effectiveness of direct gesture interaction for a safety critical maritime application

Multi-touch interaction, in particular multi-touch gesture interaction, is widely believed to give a more natural interaction style. We investigated the utility of multi-touch interaction in the safety critical domain of maritime dynamic positioning (DP) vessels. We conducted initial paper prototyping with domain experts to gain an insight into natural gestures; we then conducted observational studies aboard a DP vessel during operational duties and two rounds of formal evaluation of prototypes - the second on a motion platform ship simulator. Despite following a careful user-centred design process, the final results show that traditional touch-screen button and menu interaction was quicker and less erroneous than gestures. Furthermore, the moving environment accentuated this difference and we observed initial use problems and handedness asymmetries on some multi-touch gestures. On the positive side, our results showed that users were able to suspend gestural interaction more naturally, thus improving situational awareness

An Assessment of PIER Electric Grid Research 2003-2014 White Paper

This white paper describes the circumstances in California around the turn of the 21st century that led the California Energy Commission (CEC) to direct additional Public Interest Energy Research funds to address critical electric grid issues, especially those arising from integrating high penetrations of variable renewable generation with the electric grid. It contains an assessment of the beneficial science and technology advances of the resultant portfolio of electric grid research projects administered under the direction of the CEC by a competitively selected contractor, the University of California’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment, from 2003-2014

Offshore Platform Provides Venue to Test New Technologies

OPSTAR Program OverviewThe Offshore Platform Security Threat Awareness and Response Program (OPSTAR 2013) was an integrated series of training, field experiments, and exercise events planned and conducted by the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Asymmetric Warfare. It was conducted to explore the unique issues within homeland security, homeland defense, emergency response and emergency management presented by safety and security threats to offshore oil and gas platforms. In addition, the program provided an operationally relevant venue for the research and field experimentation of developing and transitional technologies related to maritime domain awareness

A Situational Awareness Dashboard for a Security Operations Center

As a result of this dissertation, a solution was developed which would provide visibility into an institution’s security posture and its exposure to risk. Achieving this required the development of a Situational Awareness Dashboard in a cybersecurity context. This Dashboard provides a unified point of view where workers ranging from analysts to members of the executive board can consult and interact with a visual interface that aggregates a set of strategically picked metrics. These metrics provide insight regarding two main topics, the performance and risk of the organization’s Security Operations Center (SOC). The development of the dashboard was performed while working with the multinational enterprise entitled EY. During this time frame, two dashboards were developed one for each of two of EY’s clients inserted in the financial sector. Even though the first solution did not enter production, hence not leaving testing, the dashboard that was developed for the second client successfully was delivered fulfilling the set of objectives that were proposed initially. One of those objectives was enabling the solution to be as autonomous and selfsustained as possible, through its system architecture. Despite having different architectural components, both solutions were based on the same three-layered model. Whereas the first component runs all data ingestion, parsing and transformation operations, the second is in charge of the storage of said information into a database. Finally, the last component, possibly the most important one, is the visualization software tasked with displaying the previous information into actionable intelligence through the power of data visualization. All in all, the key points listed above converged into the development of a Situational Awareness Dashboard which ultimately allows organizations to have visibility into the SOC’s activities, as well as a perception of the performance and associated risks it faces.Como resultado desta dissertação, foi desenvolvida uma solução que proporcionaria visibilidade sobre a postura de segurança de uma instituição e sua exposição ao risco. Para tal foi necessário o desenvolvimento de um Situational Awareness Dashboard num contexto de cibersegurança. Este Dashboard pretende fornecer um ponto de vista unificado onde os trabalhadores, desde analistas a membros do conselho executivo, podem consultar e interagir com uma interface visual que agrega um conjunto de métricas escolhidas estrategicamente. Essas métricas fornecem informações sobre dois tópicos principais, o desempenho e o risco do Security Operations Center (SOC) da organização. O desenvolvimento do Dashboard foi realizado em parceria com a empresa multinacional EY. Nesse período, foram desenvolvidos dois dashboards, um para cada um dos dois clientes da EY inseridos no setor financeiro. Apesar de a primeira solução não ter entrado em produção, não saindo de teste, o painel que foi desenvolvido para o segundo cliente foi entregue com sucesso cumprindo o conjunto de objetivos inicialmente proposto. Umdesses objetivos era permitir que a solução fosse o mais autónoma e auto-sustentável possível, através da sua arquitetura de sistema. Apesar de terem diferentes componentes arquiteturais, ambas as soluções foram baseadas no mesmo modelo de três camadas. Enquanto a primeiro componente executa todas as operações de ingestão, análise e transformação de dados, a segundo é responsável pelo armazenamento dessas informações numa base de dados. Finalmente, o último componente, possivelmente o mais importante, é o software de visualização encarregue em exibir as informações anteriores em inteligência acionável através do poder da visualização de dados. Em suma, os pontos-chave listados acima convergiram no desenvolvimento de um Situational Awareness Dashboard que, em última análise, permite que as organizações tenham visibilidade das atividades do SOC, bem como uma percepção do desempenho e dos riscos que esta enfrenta

NDSF technical operations via telecommunications

In 2015, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) commissioned an external study concerning the use of modern telecommunications and telepresence technologies in the potential reduction of manpower in National Deep Submergence Operations. That study has been completed, and the final report is attached as Appendix A.Funding was provided by the Nereus Legacy Fund at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutio

Integrated Space Asset Management Database and Modeling

Effective Space Asset Management is one key to addressing the ever-growing issue of space congestion. It is imperative that agencies around the world have access to data regarding the numerous active assets and pieces of space junk currently tracked in orbit around the Earth. At the center of this issues is the effective management of data of many types related to orbiting objects. As the population of tracked objects grows, so too should the data management structure used to catalog technical specifications, orbital information, and metadata related to those populations. Marshall Space Flight Center's Space Asset Management Database (SAM-D) was implemented in order to effectively catalog a broad set of data related to known objects in space by ingesting information from a variety of database and processing that data into useful technical information. Using the universal NORAD number as a unique identifier, the SAM-D processes two-line element data into orbital characteristics and cross-references this technical data with metadata related to functional status, country of ownership, and application category. The SAM-D began as an Excel spreadsheet and was later upgraded to an Access database. While SAM-D performs its task very well, it is limited by its current platform and is not available outside of the local user base. Further, while modeling and simulation can be powerful tools to exploit the information contained in SAM-D, the current system does not allow proper integration options for combining the data with both legacy and new M&S tools. This paper provides a summary of SAM-D development efforts to date and outlines a proposed data management infrastructure that extends SAM-D to support the larger data sets to be generated. A service-oriented architecture model using an information sharing platform named SIMON will allow it to easily expand to incorporate new capabilities, including advanced analytics, M&S tools, fusion techniques and user interface for visualizations. In addition, tight control of information sharing policy will increase confidence in the system, which would encourage industry partners to provide commercial data. Combined with the integration of new and legacy M&S tools, a SIMON-based architecture will provide a robust environment that can be extended and expanded indefinitely

Digital Twins for Ports: Derived from Smart City and Supply Chain Twinning Experience

Ports are striving for innovative technological solutions to cope with the ever-increasing growth of transport, while at the same time improving their environmental footprint. An emerging technology that has the potential to substantially increase the efficiency of the multifaceted and interconnected port processes is the digital twin. Although digital twins have been successfully integrated in many industries, there is still a lack of cross-domain understanding of what constitutes a digital twin. Furthermore, the implementation of the digital twin in complex systems such as the port is still in its infancy. This paper attempts to fill this research gap by conducting an extensive cross-domain literature review of what constitutes a digital twin, keeping in mind the extent to which the respective findings can be applied to the port. It turns out that the digital twin of the port is most comparable to complex systems such as smart cities and supply chains, both in terms of its functional relevance as well as in terms of its requirements and characteristics. The conducted literature review, considering the different port processes and port characteristics, results in the identification of three core requirements of a digital port twin, which are described in detail. These include situational awareness, comprehensive data analytics capabilities for intelligent decision making, and the provision of an interface to promote multi-stakeholder governance and collaboration. Finally, specific operational scenarios are proposed on how the port's digital twin can contribute to energy savings by improving the use of port resources, facilities and operations.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl