Charles River Analytics Develops Emergency Support Component for the Department of Homeland Security

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - June 26, 2013 - PRLog -- Charles River Analytics (http://www.cra.com), a developer of intelligent system solutions, presents PIECES, an emergency support component for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). PIECES, a Precision Information Environment for Coordinated Emergency Support, is part of an effort to develop integrated collaborative work environments that help teams of emergency responders share and manipulate data sources.

The Problem
During a disaster, emergency personnel must collaborate with a diverse staff distributed across numerous sites and operations centers. Emergency responders can be overwhelmed by the staggering amount of time-sensitive information coming in through different software applications and the critical pace by which this information has to be understood and distributed to other personnel. DHS has brought together a diverse team of universities, small businesses, and Federal Research centers and National Laboratories to develop components that target these needs.

The Charles River Analytics Solution
As one of DHS’s partners, Charles River has developed visualization and communication components. PIECES is part of an effort to develop integrated collaborative work environments that help teams of emergency responders share and manipulate data sources. PIECES enables responders to:

·          View multiple information resources through a single access point

·          Support manipulation, understanding, and exploitation of data sources through multi-modal displays

·          Share and manipulate data sources in real-time

The figure shows an integrated view of incidents pulled from a city dispatch; high priority incidents are more opaque and visible to the user. Local hospitals are shown by the H symbol; the bigger the symbol, the more hospital beds are available. This information is pulled in dynamically from a hospital’s data feeds.

The Benefit
PIECES integrates critical data from multiple sources and communications channels and presents them through interfaces that emergency personnel can tailor to their needs. Firefighters, police, and other rescue workers can access the information they need in real time. PIECES allows these and other First Responders to share such information, which is vital to  collaboration across federal, state, and local agencies and jurisdictions. By providing a more integrated perspective across these boundaries, PIECES provides a unique opportunity to improve the lifesaving capabilities of emergency responders in large-scale disasters.

To learn more about PIECES or our current projects or capabilities, contact us (https://www.cra.com/about-us/contact-us.asp) at www.cra.com.

About Charles River Analytics: Since 1983, Charles River Analytics has been applying computational intelligence technologies to develop mission-relevant tools and solutions to transform our customers' data into knowledge that drives accurate assessment and robust decision-making. Charles River continues to grow its technology, customer base, and strategic alliances through research and development programs for the DoD and the Intelligence Community, addressing a broad spectrum of mission areas and functional domains, including: sensor and image processing, situation assessment and decision aiding, human systems integration, and cyber analytics. These efforts have resulted in a series of successful products that support continued growth in our core R&D contracting business, as well as the commercial sector. Charles River became an employee-owned company in 2012, to set the stage for the next-generation of innovation, service, and growth.