Week 1: Digital Overlay Builds a Net of Communication

Beginning the Mission:

We begin our mission on the Hacking 4 Defense course with rapid information acquisition. Our team, compiled of budding biologists, engineers, nurses, computer scientists, and tech writers, is determined to find a solution to our customer’s, the Asymmetrical Warfare Group, problem. The first place to start any venture like this is at information gathering. Here is a quick snapshot of our week through our “A-ha” moments.

Dalton Wagner

Biology

My “A-Ha” moment from the past week would have to be talking to our sponsor. From this, we were able to get a scope of our problem and their needs. We realized that frankly, some things we thought we were going to have to think about, they just don’t care about because they already exist. They want our design to be based on a mapping of given data in an area and not so much on tracking movements of personnel, equipment, supplies, etc. Our perspective is unique in the sense that we don’t have a member of the military’s point of view. We don’t entirely understand all of the challenges that they face, which can be beneficial in our design thinking. Our ideas are almost more important than our project and final design itself. Even if we can’t develop a working prototype in a semester, thinking creatively and outside-the-box will put our group in the best position for success.

Nahom Fissaha

Engineering

My “A-Ha” moment from this week’s 10 interviews came from talking to our sponsor and another member from his team. My initial understanding of the problem was their is a lack of digital awareness that leaves decision makers/commanders uninformed. I imagined there was a lack of information to actually display or the information was challenging to access but after our interview I realize that was wrong. The real challenge is being able to display the aggregated data up to the 4th dimension(digital data) in a way that is simple and quick to access. This helps us narrow down the scope of our project to be in the user interface design space.

Mark Castro

Engineering

I had two “A-Ha” moments from this week’s interviews. The first came when our sponsor rephrased our problem statement to something like being able to map something if it physically does not exist. That really made me think about what our project is truly about, innovation. Yes, a digital overlay needs to have troop locations, and should have resources mapped but it has already been done and works effectively. The real question is, how do you map something that does not physically exist like relationships or connections. Trying to answer this question, I asked an expert in the field of GIS, Dr. Bob Kolvoord. He thought about the question and pointed out that there is no such thing as a bad guy disappearing off the face of the earth. He also stated, for things that are not tangible such as relationships, they usually trace back to some person in a physical place.

Teresa Cummings

Writing Rhetoric and Technical Communications

I had the opportunity to speak with the GIS analyst this week about ARCGIS software and my A-ha moment was when I better understood it. With ARCGIS software we can layer maps upon maps and store a multitude of data. This was my “A-Ha” moment. When I understood this concept I began to think about in what different ways could we apply it to our problem. If we can discover a safe way to collect data points from a certain area, for example, we can build a self automating map. Ever adapting, the map could mold to find and display the data. Thanks to my conversation with her, I realized how lucky we are as a team. We already have technologies and specialized people at our fingertips, as a team we need to use our available resources to build something new.

Elizabeth Cross

Nursing

I spoke with the Director of enterprise innovation at the National Geospatial-intelligence Agency. I had a couple “a-ha” moments. We may be able to get info on how to map cell data usage from the NSA… but that also made me think that there may be no way for us to actually create a finished product because cell usage may be protected information. He did offer us information about compiling info using satellites, updates from ships themselves out on the water. We also receive info from US allies. I was also involved in the interview on the ARCGIS system. We received information about the system and its user friendly capabilities. The fact that we have the opportunity to go play with the ARCGIS system online is a cool feature but it begs the question of security, if the DOD used this software would they be on another system? If you take a photo ARCGIS knows the LAT and LONG, just like on your phone you can plot where in the world you have taken pictures.

Anthony Jewett

Computer Information Systems

The greatest point of interest I discovered from our interviews is that social media is now a part of the battle space. While I understand that social media is a powerful tool for recruitment and propaganda, I did not realize that knowing social media and general network traffic may potentially be as important as knowing actual troop movement. Knowing where digital traffic is heavy and where it is going is like knowing what a force’s logistical elements are up to. Also of considerable interest in that the DoD has a vast amount of resources available for organizing data for its personnel. Knowing that this infrastructure is in place will help us tailor our solution to a format that integrates well with current infrastructure.