>> The name of our team is, we have the acronym VACCINE,
standing for Visual Analytics for Command, Control
and Interoperability Environments.
And the mission of VACCINE is to create the next generation
of technology to allow the integration
of massive data sources into an environment and create visuals
where people can interact with them
and quickly understand the situation
and make their decisions
from very simple graphical representations.
That's the role for the research mission of our school.
We recently received a grant from the Department
of Homeland Security as part of their Center
of Excellence Program to create a research team
to develop visual analytic environments where we're looking
at emergency response and all of the aspects of Homeland Security
for the U.S., and we also have international partners.
So what we're actually doing is trying to look at applications
where people are getting in real-time, large amounts
of data, they're trying to get a better understanding
of the situation and what events are occurring
so they can do planning, response, and recovery
from any sort of natural disaster or crime incidents
or public health incident.
Some of the applications we're working with,
some of our team members are working
with the Customs and Border Patrol.
Some people are working with Cyber security applications
in developing techniques
to protect the government's computer systems
when they have billions
of transactions per day they're looking at.
We're also working with first responders, from police officers
and other emergency responders for fire departments,
sheriff departments, of how do we create something
that during a crisis would allow them
to get a Command Center view as well as when they go
into the field, can they get a display on the mobile device
that they're carrying, understand the situation better
and all the characteristics of the situation,
where are the other team members, where the areas
that they need to search, where do they need to do evacuation.
The whole idea of this is, there's more
and more data that's becoming available through the Web,
through simulations, through censors
that are being placed in environments.
But in a crisis situation,
you need to make a very quick decision,
and through your visual processing your eyes are great
at giving you quick information and allowing you to pick
out the important features quickly.
So instead of looking at a table of numbers,
we create a graphic display, whether it's information
on a map or a building floor plan
or other simple visual representations, so you can see
where your efforts should be placed
to solve the problem the most quickly.
We work with people from biology to mechanical engineering
to economics to food and nutrition.
Here at Purdue as with our other partners,
doing interdisciplinary research has been a focus,
and bringing these teams together really allows you
to solve the large-scale problems
that are facing our nation and the world.
