Profiling Approach for the Interoperability of Command & Control Systems with Sensing Systems in Emergency Management

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Profiling Approach for the Interoperability of Command & Control Systems with Sensing Systems in Emergency Management Profiling Approach for the Interoperability of Command & Control Systems with Sensing Systems in Emergency Management Mert Gencturk Raul Arisi Lorenzo Toscano SRDC Ltd., Ankara, Turkey LUTECH SPA, Milano, Italy LUTECH SPA, Milano, Italy [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Yildiray Kabak Marco Di Ciano Agostino Palmitessa SRDC Ltd., Ankara, Turkey Innova Puglia SPA, Bari, Italy Innova Puglia SPA, Bari, Italy [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract In order to manage emergencies, crises and disasters effectively, different organizations with their Command & Control (C2) and Sensing Systems have to cooperate and constantly exchange and share data and information. In other words, territorial emergency management requires a cross-organisational, cross-domain, cross-level interoperability between the involved C2 and Sensing Systems. Although individual standards and specifications are usually adopted in C2 and Sensing Systems separately, there is no common, unified interoperability specification to be adopted in an emergency situation, which creates a crucial interoperability challenge for all the involved organisations. To address this challenge, we introduce a novel and practical profiling approach, which aims at achieving seamless interoperability of C2 and Sensing Systems in emergency management. Unlike the conventional profiling approach, which addresses only first three layers of interoperability stack, the profiling approach introduced in this paper involves all the layers of the communication stack in the security field. The work presented in this paper is achieved in the scope of the European Commission supported C2-SENSE project and partly in the scope of ITEA3 supported APPS Project. 1. Introduction The C2-SENSE project ( http://c2-sense.eu/ ) aims to develop a profile-based Interoperability Framework by integrating existing standards and semantically enriched web services to expose the functionalities of Command & Control (C2) Systems and Sensing Systems involved in the prevention and management of disasters and emergency situations. In a typical C2-SENSE scenario, two main interoperability challenges need to be addressed: the vertical interoperability between Sensing and C2 Systems and the horizontal interoperability among different organisations involved in the prevention and governance of emergency situations. In the former Sensing Enterprise case, decision making processes need to be constantly supported by reliable and timely data through a typical event-to-service architecture, while in the latter Enterprise Interoperability case, multi-layer semantic interoperability profiles need to be put in place to enable collaboration in such critical situations. C2-SENSE is validating its outcomes in realistic Hydrogeological risk scenarios located in Regione Puglia (Italy). According to the common definition provided by IEEE in 1990, Interoperability is “the ability of two or more systems to exchange data and to mutually understand the information which has been exchanged”. A first general Copyright © 2015 by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted only for private and academic purposes. In: M. Zelm (eds.): Proceedings of the 6 th Workshop on Enterprise Interoperability, Nîmes, France, 27-05-2015, published at http://ceur-ws.org comment is that interoperability is not integration: it is an ability, so a potential capability of well-designed systems, which could be exploited and unleashed in real cases by facilitating the integration of systems in a sustainable time- cost-quality framework of impact indicators 1. This aspect needs to be taken into account especially when aiming at integrating diverse pre-existing systems developed quite independently and with different purposes (for instance when vertically integrating physical and decisional systems in a sensing enterprise environment): the interoperability framework cannot be lossless and complete, but smart enough to allow the event-driven transformation between data- information-knowledge and wisdom. On the other hand when interoperating different systems of the same nature (e.g. in the case of two or more sensing systems – IOT interoperability – or two or more decisional systems – enterprise interoperability), the interoperability framework needs to be rigorous, seamless, formal and semantically well founded, in order to avoid misinterpretations and ambiguity. The C2-SENSE profile-based interoperability framework is an attempt to meet both requirements of flexibility and rigorousness, as explained in the sections below. Sensor Web has been widely promoted and its application has evolved from original military usages to current ubiquitous civil and commercial applications (Wang & Yuan, 2010). One of the important fields, in which the Sensor Web technology is crucial, is Emergency Management: sensors are installed on site to monitor the underlying or possible risks, for example, flooding and forest fire (Jirka et al., 2009); remote sensors such as satellites are used to find hotspots when monitoring the spread of wild fires (Moodley et al., 2006), or to help the flood warning management (Brakenridge et al., 2003); the combination of space and insitusensors are adopted to collect both space and ground data for volcano hazard monitoring (Song et al., 2008). Optimally, in a real use case, the data from different types of sensors are combined together for implementing a collaborative task. Thus, a seamless interoperability of such sensor systems is very crucial and needed. Moreover, timely available, reliable and intelligible information retrieval from sensors, and sharing of these among organizations, is critical for effective management of emergencies, crises and disasters. To achieve this, many different organizations having different Command and Control Systems and Sensing Systems have to cooperate and this is only possible through interoperability. Without standards and well-defined specifications, however, the interoperability of these systems can be quite challenging, technologically complex, time consuming and expensive. Furthermore, although there are commonly used standards and specifications, which also address different layers in the communication stack, in the command and control, sensor and emergency management domains, there is no single specification of using these standards together in an emergency situation. Such dispersed standards and specifications create a crucial interoperability challenge. To address the challenge profiling is offered as a practical approach in achieving seamless interoperability by addressing all the layers of the communication stack in the security field. The profile concept aims to eliminate the need for a prior bilateral agreement between any two information exchange partners by defining a standard set of messages/documents, choreographies, business rules and constraints. The profile compliant partners are able to exchange information and services among themselves. This is in contrast to the bilateral agreements that have to be settled between partners for each new exchange partner. Considering the nature of emergency management, in which the responding organizations can change at run time (especially in an international intervention case), these generic profiles provide much needed coordination flexibility in order to deal with the unexpected circumstances and prevent chaotic response in a crisis situation. Profiling has already been successfully implemented in domains such as eHealth through “Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise Profiles” 2. This conventional profiling approach, however, addresses only the first three layers of the Interoperability Stack (Namli & Dogac, 2010): the “Communication Layer” covers the transport and communication layer protocols; the “Document Layer” addresses the content format of the messages and documents exchanged among the applications, and the “Business Process Layer” addresses the choreography of the activities to be executed by the participants. In Emergency Management, however, organizational aspects, such as policies, procedures, operations and strategies are as important as technical aspects of interoperability. Therefore the interoperability stack shown in Figure 1 has been proposed for crisis control and management (Tolk, 2003). 1 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE Standard Computer Dictionary: A Compilation of IEEE Standard Computer Glossaries. New York, NY: 1990. 2 http://www.ihe.net/profiles/index.cfm Figure 1: Interoperability Stack Profiles in emergency domain can be developed by addressing all the layers of this Interoperability Stack, thus exposing available applications, implementing the missing technologies, and making them available to the emergency community. These profiles are not yet another information model or data format. On the contrary, they can be regarded as best practice documents on the use of existing dispersed standards in the addressed domain and situation. Emergency Interoperability Profiles have been developed in three main steps: 1. Emergency Domain Inventory : existing standards, real life use cases of sensors, devices, C2 systems and emergency management architectures for different scenarios in security field are surveyed and Emergency Domain Inventory is created. 2. Emergency Domain Ontology : in order to gather all stakeholders’ knowledge in a unique and flexible data model, modular and focused Emergency Domain Ontology is developed based on Emergency Domain Inventory.
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