This project will develop advanced Information Technology tools, mathematical models, and prototype infrastructure for disaster modeling and management. The project will bring comprehensive information and numerical prediction where it is needed, at the disaster command center, in real time. The system will incorporate large volume of information from data streams, e.g., as maps, sensor, surveyance, and weather data, and the mathematical model will run on remote supercomputers. The model will be controlled by dynamically available data, and the results visualized in distributed devices, like laptops and palmtops connected to the Internet by wireless ethernet and a broadband satellite link. Other sensors and airborne imagers will also be networked wirelessly. The core of the envisioned modeling system will be an existing computer model of wildland and weather around the area, adn these models will be rewritten from scratch using modern software engineering methodology as a data driven application, and enhanced by new mathematical modeling techniques together with advanced statistical techniques will be used to manage uncertainty. High-performance middleware will be used to connect omputational nodes, sensor nodes, surveyance nodes, and visualization nodes into a distributed information and modeling system. New network software technologies will make the communication between the nodes secure and provide quality of service guarantees. The system will be designed to tolerate interruptions of communication, increased latencies, and node disappearances.
