National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST

AI on call: George Mason and Fairfax County dial up emergency response

Nathan Kahl — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 13:26:41 +0000

AI on call: George Mason and Fairfax County dial up emergency response Nathan Kahl Mon, 11/25/2024 - 08:26

In This Story

When you have a dire emergency you want help from wherever you can get it. Even if it’s from an AI voice assistant.

��AV received a grant of nearly $1 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for enhancing emergency response, specifically using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve training and other capabilities of the emergency communication systems in Northern Virginia. The funding was made possible through the efforts of Congressman Gerry Connolly, who sponsored the proposal.

“As we strive to improve our emergency preparedness and response capabilities, it is absolutely critical that we recognize the potential of new and emerging technologies—including AI,” said Connolly. “By utilizing this technology safely and effectively in our public safety systems, we can reduce response times, lighten the workload for 911 call centers and first responders, and better communicate with the community during emergency situations. I am so proud to have secured this important funding, and I look forward to seeing these federal dollars put to good use for the betterment of all of us who call Fairfax County home.”

This work will be performed by George Mason’s transdisciplinary Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC) team. “This work is only possible by engaging a unique transdisciplinary team representing three different colleges, toward enhancing emergency communications resiliency and effectiveness with AI,” said Paul Houser, C-RASC executive director. “We thank Congressman Connolly and the George Mason transdisciplinary vision for the realization of this project, and look forward to making a difference in Fairfax emergency management and beyond.”

Linton Wells II, executive advisor to the Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities and to the C5I Center at George Mason, said that the university is actively engaged with the Fairfax County Department of Public Safety and Communications (Fairfax County’s 9-1-1 Center), as well as other emergency management organizations.

Fairfax County's 9-1-1 center receives around 400,000 emergency calls annually. Photo provided by Fairfax County

“We talked to public safety officials around Fairfax and the most receptive entity was the 9-1-1 call center,” he said. “We were invited to join operators on the call center floor and observe them taking calls and dispatching people, which was very impressive. They really are interested in training and would like to spend more time talking to the community about what they do.”

Wells added that AI can improve public safety effectiveness in numerous ways.

“It could help reduce delays in processing calls, enhance caller experiences, and improve dispatching efficiency, for example. The plan is to begin by using it to improve training, which is an excellent place to get immediate gains and learn more about how it best can be used.”

George Mason will work with local communities to make citizens more aware of what’s being done in emergency preparedness and will provide feedback to public safety officials. The technology can also help officials interpret public sentiment as a disaster is occurring, supporting another goal of the project, which is to improve stakeholder engagement and enhancing support to underserved communities.

Karina V. Korostelina, professor and director of the Sustainable Peace Lab at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, said that the university will work with local officials on further outreach and communication efforts in support of the project.

“Our task is to create a systemic community engagement plan that involves Neighborhood and Community Services, Immigration Services, Fairfax County Public Schools and libraries in educating community members about the use of 911 and the role of AI," Korostelina said. "We also will conduct multiple focus groups and townhalls to understand community concerns and facilitate participatory approaches to the improvement of public safety and communications." Her team, which includes PhD student and a post-doc, will implement cutting-edge practices of co-creation and community empowerment to enhance collaboration between communities and government agencies in Fairfax.

Other project investigators from C-RASC and CEC include Kathryn Laskey, professor emerita of Systems Engineering and Operations Research, and Hemant Purohit, associate professor of Information Sciences and Technology, who will closely work with a CEC doctoral student and industry partners to design an AI assistant to enable personalized conversation-based training for call-takers to go through various real-world scenarios at their own pace while accounting for complexities such as varying incident descriptions and multilingual callers.

“Since 9-1-1’s inception in 1968, voice communication has been the cornerstone of 9-1-1 emergency services,” said Andrew Clarke, assistant director of operations in the Department of Public Safety Communications, Fairfax County 9-1-1. “However, with the rise of smartphones, smart homes, and AI, our community has moved beyond traditional voice-based interaction.”

Clarke said this new partnership with George Mason will allow Fairfax County to reimagine workflows, not just improving service, but setting a new benchmark for community engagement. "We are transforming the 9-1-1 landscape to ensure we are as innovative and forward-thinking as the technologies that surround us today.”

Topics

Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities

Artificial Intellgence

Research

National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST

Partners weigh in on the magnitude and opportunity with the critical Landolt Mission

Colleen Rich — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 16:12:10 +0000

Partners weigh in on the magnitude and opportunity with the critical Landolt Mission Colleen Rich Mon, 06/10/2024 - 12:12

��AV will be the home of the $19.5 million recently approved Landolt NASA Space Mission that will put an artificial “star” in orbit around the Earth. George Mason faculty and students will work together with the NASA and NIST and nine other organizations for a first-of-its-kind project for a university in the Washington, D.C., area.

With mission control based at George Mason on its Fairfax Campus, the team also includes Blue Canyon Technologies; California Institute of Technology; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Mississippi State University; Montreal Planetarium and iREx/University of Montreal; the University of Florida; the University of Hawaiʻi; the University of Minnesota, Duluth; and the University of Victoria.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists S. Deustua, J. Rice, and B. Alberding will apply their expertise to the calibration of Landolt-emitted light. This will be critical, as precise calibration enables astronomers to better answer pressing questions like: “Are there other Earths? What is the history of the universe?"

"Major new telescopes—like NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory—intend to measure the expansion history of the universe using the brightnesses of supernovae. However, errors in brightness calibration across wavelengths could lead to incorrect measurements. Landolt will solve this problem by providing telescopes with light of known brightness," said Greg Aldering of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Physics Division, who will serve on the Landolt science team to ensure that it is designed and performs as needed for precision cosmology measurements.

Once the Landolt satellite is in orbit, Aldering and his team plan to observe the calibrated light from Landolt with ground-based instruments, including the SuperNova Integral Field Spectrograph (SNIFS) in Hawaii, built in part by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, equipped with a 3.2 billion pixel camera built by DOE.

“Being a part of this space mission along with brilliant experts by contributing to target selection and data analysis is an exciting prospect,” said Canada’s Jonathan Gagné, scientific advisor at the Planétarium | Montréal Space for Life, adjunct professor at Université de Montréal, and member of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iRex). “The impact that the Landolt mission will have in different areas of astrophysics, notably in exoplanet characterization and in measuring the accelerating expansion of the universe, will be particularly important,” Gagné explained.

"The measurements by Landolt will enable tremendous progress for a wide range of ground-based astronomical observations,” said Daniel Huber, associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻiʻs Institute for Astronomy. The University of Hawaiʻi will provide access to the UH88 telescope located atop of Maunakea, Hawaiʻi, one of the ground stations that will observe Landolt during its mission. Maunakea is one of the best sites for ground-based astronomy in the world.

“The University of Victoria is excited to be an institutional collaborator on the NASA Landolt mission. We will leverage what we've learned from the CSA-funded, UVic-led ORCASat CubeSat satellite mission and are greatly looking forward to contributing to the success of this new mission,” said Justin Albert, professor of physics and astronomy at University of Victoria.

“This project is tackling a truly fundamental problem in astronomy in a very novel way,” said Dan Stevens, PhD, an assistant professor of Astronomy at the University of Minnesota Duluth. “By creating an "artificial star,” measuring its brightness in the lab, and launching it into space, our team will then be able to take lab-calibrated measurements of real stars' actual, absolute brightnesses. This level of accuracy wasn’t possible before, and it will allow us to overcome decades-long sources of uncertainty in how well we measure the fundamental properties of stars and the planets they host.”

“Landolt is an exciting opportunity to enable absolute calibration in astronomy at an unprecedented level,” said David Ciardi, Chief Scientist for NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) at Caltech/IPAC. “For as long as people have looked up at the night sky, a fundamental question has always been: ‘What is the true brightness of that star?’ Landolt has the opportunity to change astronomy for the relatively minimal cost of a NASA Astrophysics Pioneer program,” Ciardi explained.

NExScI, responsible for the Landolt data archiving and contributing to the ground support through Palomar Observatory suggests, “Even with today’s modern instruments, true brightness calibration has only been good to a few percent, and Landolt will enable an improvement by more than a factor of 10. Understanding the true brightness of stars allows to understand the stars better—and, perhaps more importantly, understand the planets that orbit the stars better.

Topics

NASA

Research

National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST

Strategic Direction

Aerospace

��AV announces its first NASA Space Mission, which seeks to uncover the secrets of dark energy

Jeannine Harvey — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 13:34:19 +0000

��AV announces its first NASA Space Mission, which seeks to uncover the secrets of dark energy Jeannine Harvey Mon, 06/10/2024 - 09:34

��AV will be the home of the $19.5 million recently approved Landolt NASA Space Mission that will put an artificial “star” in orbit around the Earth. This artificial star will allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightness of stars ranging from those nearby to the distant explosions of supernova in far-off galaxies. By establishing absolute flux calibration, the mission will begin to address several open challenges in astrophysics including the speed and acceleration of the universe expansion.

"This mission marks another first for ��AV, a milestone that proves our impact as a major public research university truly knows no bounds,” ��AV President Gregory Washington said. “It's an honor for George Mason to lead this unique team seeking to expand the boundaries of knowledge through College of Science associate professor Peter Plavchan’s collaboration with NASA, one of George Mason's most prestigious research partners.”

Scientists know the universe is expanding, which is measured by calculating the brightness of numerous stars and by the number of photons-per-second they emit. According to Plavchan, a George Mason associate professor of physics and astronomy and the Landolt Mission primary investigator, more accurate measurements are needed for the next breakthroughs.

Landolt Mission Principal Investigator Peter Plavchan, associate professor of physics and astronomy at ��AV's College of Science. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

Named for late astronomer Arlo Landolt, who put together widely used catalogs of stellar brightness throughout the 1970s through the 1990s, this mission will launch a light into the sky in 2029 with a known emission rate of photons, and the team will observe it next to real stars to make new stellar brightness catalogs. The satellite (artificial star) will have eight lasers shining at ground optical telescopes in order to calibrate them for observations. The effort will not make the artificial stars so brightly to see with the naked eye, but one can see it with a personal telescope at home.

“This mission is focused on measuring fundamental properties that are used daily in astronomical observations,” said Eliad Peretz, NASA Goddard mission and instrument scientist and Landolt’s deputy principal investigator. “It might impact and change the way we measure or understand the properties of stars, surface temperatures, and the habitability of exoplanets.”

The artificial star will orbit earth 22,236 miles up, far enough away to look like a star to telescopes back on Earth. This orbit also allows it to move at the same speed of the Earth’s rotation, keeping it in place over the United States during its first year in space. “This is what is considered an infrastructure mission for NASA, supporting the science in a way that we’ve known we needed to do, but with a transformative change in how we do it,” Plavchan explained.

Landolt Mission contributor Peter Pachowicz, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in George Mason's College of Engineering and Computing. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

The payload, which is the size of the proverbial bread box, will be built in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a world leader in measuring photon emissions. “This calibration under known laser wavelength and power will remove effects of atmosphere filtration of light and allow scientists to significantly improve measurements,” said Piotr Pachowicz, associate professor in Mason’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who is leading this component of the mission.

George Mason faculty and students from Mason’s College of Science and College of Engineering and Computing will work together with the NASA and NIST and nine other organizations for a first-of-its-kind project for a university in the Washington, D.C., area.

“This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for George Mason and our students," said Pachowicz. "Our team will design, build, and integrate the payload, which—because it’s going very high into geostationary orbit—must handle incredible challenges.”

With more accurate measurements, experts will use the improved data from the project to enhance understanding of stellar evolution, habitable zones or exoplanets in proximity to Earth, and refine dark energy parameters, setting a foundation for the next great leaps in scientific discovery. “When we look at a star with a telescope, no one can tell you today the rate of photons or brightness coming from it with the desired level of accuracy,” Plavchan, who is also the director of Mason’s Observatories in Fairfax, said. “We will now know exactly how many photons-per-second come out of this source to .25 percent accuracy.”

"Flux calibration is essential for astronomical research.” explained NIST’s Susana Deustua, a physical scientist in the NIST Remote Sensing Group. “We constantly ask: ‘How big? How bright? How far?’ and then ponder: ‘What is the universe made of? Are we alone?’ Accurate answers require precise measurements and excellent instrument characterization,” Deustua said.

Learn more at landolt.gmu.edu

Learn more about the mission

Landolt partners weigh in on importance of this mission

Did You Know

The Landolt Space Mission is named for the late astronomer Arlo Landolt, one of the most recognizable American astronomers. Renowned throughout the astronomical community for his discoveries, astronomers and physicists worldwide continue to use his series of papers, which established the “Landolt Photometric Standard Star Catalog,” and his standard stars are among the most heavily used photometric standards throughout the globe.

Find out more >>

Topics

National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST

College of Engineering and Computing

Mason Momentum

George Mason faculty are tackling cybersecurity’s talent pipeline problem

Jennifer Anzaldi — Fri, 10 May 2024 17:01:06 +0000

George Mason faculty are tackling cybersecurity’s talent pipeline problem Jennifer Anzaldi Fri, 05/10/2024 - 13:01

If you’re a cybercriminal, the latest news on cybersecurity talent shortfalls should put a smile on your face. For example, the majority of cybersecurity leaders report that their teams are understaffed, and they have problems retaining qualified professionals.

But for Nirup Menon, a ��AV professor of information systems and operations management (ISOM), and Brian Ngac, an instructor in the ISOM area, this workforce challenge is a golden career opportunity for the young people of Northern Virginia and the Washington, D.C., area.

Nirup Menon and Brian Ngac

The pair recently won a two-year award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, to create unique experiential learning opportunities and workshops designed to enhance cybersecurity education and workforce development.

Working closely with industry partners Mobius Consulting and Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Menon and Ngac will recruit and help select students to work on actual cybersecurity projects. “They need to have taken some fundamental cyber class ahead of time,” Menon clarifies. “We want students with a commitment to the field. It allows you to get experience but it’s also competitive.”

Throughout the 12-week projects, students will receive mentoring both from the industry participant and from business faculty. “We run it in an agile scrum-like manner,” Ngac says. “Every week, we ask ‘What did you do?’ ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘What are the challenges that are impacting your work?’” If students run into trouble, faculty mentors can work with industry managers to help them get back on track.

“We’re trying to build not just the cyber workforce but the skills as well,” Ngac says.

Menon and Ngac have developed a specialty in this type of hands-on learning, which they have dubbed the Professional Readiness Experiential Program (PREP). More than 100 Virginia-based undergraduates and 20 industry participants have participated in PREP, which includes projects funded by two Commonwealth Cybersecurity Initiative Experiential Learning grants in collaboration with Mobius and IDA.

“PREP not only focuses on cybersecurity projects, but also works on many business process improvement projects,” says Ngac. "Honors and high-performing ISOM students work on real-world projects with industry participants on identifying technical solutions to business challenges through rigorous research, modelling, analysis, quantification, risk management, implementation planning, and, at times, execution.”

The NIST award also incorporates workshops for students who are new to cybersecurity but interested in exploring it as a career option. Workshops will be launched in collaboration with Trinity Washington University (TWU), an HBCU whose College of Arts and Sciences is women-only. For a field such as cybersecurity, which continues to face diversity challenges, the participation of organizations such as TWU is essential.

“We want to bring in students who have not thought of cybersecurity as a field, because they think it’s all engineering, hacking and coding,” Menon says. The workshops will emphasize the variety of functions that are integral to the space, such as management and auditing, in addition to engineering.

Students and industry participants in the current CCI Experiential Learning Projects

“It’s not just tech, there may be creativity involved in anticipating scams and threats,” Ngac explains. “These are different things we’ll be bringing up in the workshop in terms of roleplaying what cybercriminals might do, or how someone might try to socially engineer an attack.”

Unlike a standard grant, the NIST award is structured as a cooperative agreement in which the funding agency will collaborate in shaping and delivering programs as they evolve.

“The advantage of working with NIST is that top people work there. They are the standards body, so they have seen and surveyed a lot of industry,” Menon says. He also lauds NIST’s high-level view of cybersecurity and its implications. “They’re not just looking at technology but also public policy, human factors, etc. It’s a holistic approach.”

Organizations interested in being an industry participant (whether they have cybersecurity-focused or business process improvement-focused projects) with PREP are encouraged to contact Brian Ngac.