Design of the National Bioforensics Library Infrastructure

Abstract

This design document is the first concrete step in developing a national resource for Bioforensics, the ''Bioforensics Information Encyclopedia''. This resource will contain a semantically consistent representation of all the information relevant to the nation's bio-defense efforts. The availability of such a resource will provide analysts and scientists with efficient, timely access to the information needed to accomplish such tasks as locating relevant experts, determining an optimal order of appropriate forensic tests, and comparing the ''signature'' of the current attack to previous ones. Much of the information required for this repository is scattered across multiple institutions in differing formats and is either currently being generated or is proposed as part of new research efforts. Without effective integration and curation, the data is of limited availability and use. This resource would be utilized by several government agencies to prepare for, investigate, analyze, and respond to bio-terrorist events. In particular, NBACC requires a highly advanced knowledge base of this nature to perform its unique role for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Under our current execution plan, an implementation of the design provided in this document will be demonstrated in a limited functionality prototype that can be deployed at NBACC-West (LLNL). This prototype will provide analysts with access to semantically consistent data from multiple data sources through a single, web-based interface. This interface will support a limited number of queries against an underlying data warehouse. The prototype data warehouse will include information from at least three of the scientific domains relevant to Bioforensics (e.g. genomics, pathogen signature, disease symptoms, chemical/toxicity). While the purpose of this document is to provide a design for the entire infrastructure, we identify those aspects of the infrastructure that will not be included in the initial prototype in Section 0. This document is considered to be a living document. As a result, we expect to incorporate changes in the infrastructure design as we learn from our initial prototypes, explore additional collaborative opportunities, and interact with our target customers. We also expect to extend this document with the inclusion of appendices focusing on the detailed design and implementation strategies in the coming year.