White Paper: Analyst Decision Support Tool - Active Natural Hazard Monitor
INTRODUCTION
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) supports worldwide natural disasters through its Integrated Working Group for Readiness, Response, and Recovery (IWG-R3). In the United States, the IWG-R3 directly supports FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard with geospatial products and information. The IWG-R3's worldwide mission includes support for the State Department, Military, and non-governmental organizations. On any given day, there are forty earthquakes greater than magnitude 4 in addition to numerous large scale droughts, wild fires, dust storms, and weather related hazards. The IWG-R3 is currently working to develop standardized tradecraft for monitoring and responding to natural hazards which could develop into more significant events.
RAYTHEON APPROACH
Raytheon is developing an innovative Analyst Decision Support Tool capability through internal research and development (IRAD) that can assist missions to not only monitor natural hazard events, but also anticipate the potentially needed readiness, response, and recovery efforts. The IRAD objective is to improve situational awareness of developing natural hazards and to standardize an appropriate response. In support of this effort, the IRAD is exploring an analyst-controlled model to standardize the continuous measurement of hazard impact severity. The focus of this model will be to provide a relative ranking of a hazard's potential for impacting population and infrastructure. Analysts would be able to use this relative ranking to prioritize resources on the most critical events.
Additionally, the model would support the generation of alerts and the execution of a pre-defined course of action to assist in the reduction of response timelines. Utilizing an agile methodology, the development team is implementing prioritized features in three week sprints. Raytheon has defined a basic analytic model for actively monitoring hazard events. The selected model is analogous to a personal credit score, widely used in banking. Personal credit scores are calculated using a weighted scorecard which provides a mathematically-derived probability that an individual will be able to repay a loan . In the FICO model, multiple factors are evaluated and weighted to determine an overall credit score. These factors include payment history, outstanding balances, credit history, and new credit requests . The benefit of this model is in its simplicity and transparency. Significant hazards have an impact on media reports, social media interactions, financial markets and measurable traffic. As a proof of concept, the IRAD is focusing on this exploration on social media reporting of hazard impacts.
SUMMARY
This Raytheon-developed IRAD capability proof of concept can help support Readiness, Response, and Recovery missions with a model-based approach that lays a foundation for standardizing the response to continuously evolving natural hazards.
