| Military-civilian information sharing presents a myriad of unique technical and non-technical challenges. Technical challenges include managing the communication between disparate, stove-piped systems, each producing information in different formats and modalities, which were built for different communities of practice, with different applications in mind, as well as different protocols and terminology. These difficulties increase exponentially when considering information sharing within the adhoc or emergent coalitions that are required to respond to large scale, multi-jurisdictional events such as Katrina or 9/11. Non-technical challenges include Command and Control, the disparate operating protocols and communication styles of coalition members, legal, privacy and security issues surrounding the sharing of various types of data, and the often ambiguous authority and jurisdiction relationships amongst coalition members.
We describe our research and its results in creating a field-deployable platform to enable bi-directional automated information sharing between military and civilian systems. In our research we use ontologies designed by multiple Subject Matter Experts to drive a Peer-to-Peer information exchange network in the Bio-Surveillance domain. Our work is unique in that the network can accommodate members with varying technical capabilities without deteriorating to the level of the weakest node. Furthermore, we have also specifically included non-technical issues, such as consideration of compliance and regulations, e.g. HIPAA, dynamic C2, and multi-jurisdictional response. In addition to our findings, we will also discuss gaps that were identified as the result of this research and our vision of areas for future research. |