COPtimization and the operational banality of policing's technocratic drive

Historically, government organizations have developed centers as hubs for command and control functions. Over the past decade there has been significant interest in shared situational awareness and collaboration as well as improvement in networking capabilities of these organizations, which has resulted in concepts and terms such as common operational picture, common relevant operational picture, and user-defined operational picture. These 'pictures' make operational information available directly to an individual's desktop (outside the operations centers). This paper defines and introduces the technology concepts for a user-defined operational picture (UDOP) that enable collaboration by providing visual situational awareness to end-users working within an operational network-centric environment that is offering an increasing number of Web service-enabled information sources. UDOPs are created, visualized, augmented, tailored, and shared by the organization to enhance situational awareness and support collaborative and hierarchical decision-making. The UDOP architecture supports 2D, 3D, and 4D (3D + time) visualization using COTS technologies. Implementation of a robust and flexible UDOP system relies on several key system design patterns that include service oriented architecture (SOA), plug-in mechanisms, layer/filter models, and loose coupling. This paper will also describe one reference implementation of a UDOP system by reviewing an operationally deployed capability called global awareness presentation services (GAPS).

How can the responders of an oil spill operation make sure that the Common Operating Picture (COP) gives the situational awareness that is needed? How can the response personnel avoid producing and consuming so much data that the COP gets overloaded with information? How can the users differentiate the “need to have” from the “nice to have” data? And what type of information do response personnel need offshore, and is that same information relevant for the Incident Command Post? These are some of the questions that NOFO has discussed with the Norwegian Coastal Administration, our partner in the project “Web based map solution”. The project has so far developed a shoreline response tool, consisting of a web map solution and a mobile application (App). With the “Shoreline App” you can collect data in the field, take pictures and video, view oil contamination, and quickly communicate this to the web map-solution. This new technology enables the response organisation to document and act faster, more efficient with increased accuracy. The shoreline clean-up module includes SCAT, work assignments and daily reports from the field, as well as statistics and analysing tools. Inspired by IOGP-IPIECA (2015), NOFO have started to improve the NOFO COP OSR (oil spill response) to cover offshore, nearshore and shoreline operations. The scope for this work is to create a seamless integration of the different data that we receive, especially the surveillance sensor data such as aerial overflights, satellite images, images from ships and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). All the data registered in the system are given a predefined timeframe in which they will automatically be deactivated from the COP. This aids us in managing the data flow, presenting the latest information available, and avoid taking action based on outdated information. A timeline gives either predictions, real time information or historical data, and enables the user to “play off” the incident from Day 1 until the end, or even for a specific period. The Adaptive interface, which is the platform the NOFO COP OSR uses, features the possibility to build different COP viewpoints for different levels in the response organisation. The NOFO COP OSR may also be used for communication externally during and after clean-up efforts. The public and press can get limited insight through role-based access. Based on the collected data, statistics and graphs are easily generated for use in the preparation of reports and presentations.

A Common Operational Picture (COP) can generally be described as a system of hardware and software that produces a shared display of information to facilitate situational awareness and decision making. A brief history of the development and use of COP technology in Arctic operations is provided. Experience and learnings from ExxonMobil's research into the use of COPs in ice management and Arctic floating drilling is described. Experience gained from simulations, desktop studies, and field observations is used to frame preliminary functional requirements for such technology needed for future Arctic floating drilling operations in high concentration ice. The COP must facilitate the planning and execution of complex and remote operations with many geographically distributed assets (e.g., drilling rig; icebreakers; shore base; manned or unmanned aviation) and stakeholders (e.g., icebreaker captains, drilling management, ice analysts, weather forecasters) at times communicating over limited bandwidth channels. The COP will serve to collect, store, communicate, and display the necessary data and information. The role of COP components (e.g., databases; communication network, displays) is described and functional requirements are outlined.

Although significant progress has been made in developing the practice of humanitarian logistics, further improvements in efficiency and effectiveness have the potential to save lives and reduce suffering. This paper explores how the military/emergency services' concept of a common operating picture (COP) can be adapted to the humanitarian logistics context, and analyses a practical and proven approach to addressing the key challenge of inter-agency coordination and decision-making. Successful adaptation could provide the mechanism through which predicted and actual demands, together with the location and status of material in transit, are captured, evaluated, and presented in real time as the basis for enhanced decision-making between actors in the humanitarian supply network. Through the introduction of a humanitarian logistics COP and its linkages to national disaster management systems, local communities and countries affected by disasters and emergencies will be better placed to oversee and manage their response activities.

Developing a Common Operating Picture (COP) is a key enabler for the success on the modern battlefield. In this paper, we propose a distributed approach for developing a Consensus Based Common Operating Picture (CBCOP) where the participating assets iteratively synchronize their local operating pictures and establish a consensus. This enables generation of a COP in a truly distributed fashion with multiple command and control nodes each having a consistent COP and thereby mitigating some of the issues with centralized COP. The effectiveness of this strategy can only be realized by the development of algorithms for distributed situational awareness and mission planning. Thus we suggest two specific state of art algorithms and demonstrate their effectiveness in generating CBCOP through simulations.

When a spatiotemporal events happens, multi-source intelligence data is gathered to understand the problem, and strategies for solving the problem are investigated. The difficulties arising from handling spatial and temporal intelligence data represent the main problem. The map might be the bridge to visualize the data and to get the most understand model for all stakeholders. For the analysis of geodata based intelligence data, a software was developed as a working environment that combines geodata with optimized ergonomics. The interaction with the common operational picture (COP) is so essentially facilitated. The composition of the COP is based on geodata services, which are normalized by international standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The basic geodata are combined with intelligence data from images (IMINT) and humans (HUMINT), stored in a NATO Coalition Shared Data Server (CSD). These intelligence data can be combined with further information sources, i.e., live sensors. As a result a COP is generated and an interaction suitable for the specific workspace is added. This allows the users to work interactively with the COP, i.e., searching with an on board CSD client for suitable intelligence data and integrate them into the COP. Furthermore, users can enrich the scenario with findings out of the data of interactive live sensors and add data from other sources. This allows intelligence services to contribute effectively to the process by what military and disaster management are organized.

Ever more observed data on destination and mode choices made by travelers is becoming available from e.g. GSM and ANPR data. For strategic transport demand modelling, this means that instead of estimating synthetic models and calibrating them on the limited set of available observations for a single study period definition, different data sources are fused to a 'common operational picture' of the total travel demand for many different study period definitions and this fused data is parametrized to a synthetic model for application in model forecasts. Three issues arise in the data fusion step. Firstly, inconsistencies between data sources and/or observations need to be detected and removed. Secondly, different data sources need to be weighted and normalized, often without (comparable or usable) reliability measures available. Thirdly, the data fusion problem is underspecified: the level of spatial detail of the transport models zoning system is usually higher than the observed data can provide. This paper proposes and demonstrates a method that solves all three data fusion problems by use of a multi-proportional gravity model to fuse all data into a single set of travel demand matrices. This set of demand matrices can be directly used in operational applications or parametrized to be used in tactical and strategical applications using a bi-level optimization method that is also described in this paper. The methodology is used to conduct OD matrix estimation using GSM data, observed modal splits, trip frequency distributions and synthetic trip generation, but can be used to fuse and parametrize any data source that relates to (aggregates of) mode-origin-destination combinations.

Developing a concept of a context-aware common operational picture

: The concept of the Common Operational Picture (COP) was created to provide the operational commander with improved situational awareness. Numerous organizations have developed conceptual frameworks regarding the technical aspects of developing a COP. Two notable frameworks are the Network Centric Warfare, and System of Systems approaches. In addition to technical challenges, there exists a need to address the proper display, use, and interpretation of the data contained in the COP. Each level of command has a unique perspective on issues that enter the staffing process. The COP is no different. Interpretations of the COP may vary with the perspectives and experiences of the staffs. As a result, a common picture may not guarantee a common understanding of the battlespace. To ensure that the operational commander gets the situational awareness he desires, the staffs of the services and the Combatant Commander need to address doctrinal, personnel, training and organizational issues.

A new approach to requirement development for a common operational picture to support distributed situation awareness

Teaching and Learning Guide for: ‘Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2011 Terrorist attacks’

Many operations, be they military, police, rescue, or other field operations, require localization services and online situation awareness to make them effective. Questions such as how many people are inside a building and their locations are essential. In this paper, an online localization and situation awareness system is presented, called Mobile Urban Situation Awareness System (MUSAS), for gathering and maintaining localization information, to form a common operational picture. The MUSAS provides multiple localization services, as well as visualization of other sensor data, in a common frame of reference. The information and common operational picture of the system is conveyed to all parties involved in the operation, the field team, and people in the command post. In this paper, a general system architecture for enabling localization based situation awareness is designed and the MUSAS system solution is presented. The developed subsystem components and forming of the common operational picture are summarized, and the future potential of the system for various scenarios is discussed. In the demonstration, the MUSAS is deployed to an unknown building, in an ad hoc fashion, to provide situation awareness in an urban indoor military operation.

The maintenance of a consistent Common Operational Picture based on sensor/agent networks can be very challenging for high-tempo situations. Moreover shorter times for detecting threats are advantageous for air, land, and marine forces. An enabler to early detections is the autonomous adjustment of each sensor/agent contribution to the Common Operational Picture so that all sensors/agents “agree” faster. In this publication we first identify degrees-of-freedom variables available in a generic Common Operational Picture for accelerating the consensus among a network of sensors/agents with unidirectional (one-way) random communications. Then we exploit a recent sub-network (or localized) consensus concept, originally developed for networks represented by continuous-time models, and we extend the accelerated consensus results to networks modeled as discrete-time dynamical systems by adapting edge weights of directed graphs. Consequently the present development facilitates digital implementations. An example is used to convey concepts and provide results.

The Total Operations Management for Safety Critical Activities (TOSCA) project aims to develop a safety management framework that integrates best practices, tools and methods for functional analysis, risk assessment, interactive emergency scenarios analysis, performance monitoring, design review, training and knowledge management. The TOSCA approach is described by a T-model based around a central ‘Common Operational Picture' (COP) that holds information regarding the operational system, and is used to support risk assessment and management. The information held in the COP may be represented in different ways but should be accessible to all stakeholders in order to analyse and communicate risk, and to support training and procedure design

: The U.S. military is currently in the process of undergoing a visionary transformation of its forces using technological advances with the goal of maintaining global superiority into and beyond the 21st century. The single most important technological advancement that will transform the military and allow it to attain full spectrum dominance will be the capability to effectively capture and integrate the vast amount of information on individual networks into a Common Operating Picture (COP). The military's vision is to accomplish this with Network Centric Warfare (NCW) through the integration of informational grids. The military, though, continues to maintain its focus narrowly on information obtained by military sources only and is neglecting to include another significant information source: civil relief agencies. In order to achieve true information superiority the information from thousands of civil relief agencies needs to be integrated into the COP. Over the past decade the U.S. military has been heavily involved with Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW) which, by its nature, includes interaction with numerous civil relief agencies. Throughout all of these operations, the critical importance of efficiently sharing information between the military and these agencies has been proven over and over again. This is especially true in MOOTW, but as Operation Enduring Freedom has shown, it is also important in war. Therefore, to neglect developing methods to integrate the civil relief agencies' vital information into the COP could prove to be disastrous.