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November 4, 2013 By AMK

Georgia Tech researchers evaluate electronic flight bags for Air National Guard

When pilots encounter an in-flight emergency – such as engine or hydraulic failure – they consult with manuals, emergency procedures and other reference materials contained in their flight bags for information on how to respond. In the future, these cumbersome flight bags could be replaced by “electronic flight bags” consisting of a lightweight tablet computer loaded with electronic versions of documents that today are printed on paper. A tablet computer could easily store an entire library of aeronautical publications and charts and also include the most up-to-date versions.

Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are currently assessing the usability of electronic flight bags by Air National Guard pilots. Electronic flight bags could improve safety, operational effectiveness and efficiency for crew members, plus save paper and printing costs. The Federal Aviation Administration has already approved in-flight use of Apple iPads as electronic flight bags by commercial pilots.

electronic flight bag
A pilot tests an electronic flight bag in this flight simulator. Researchers are evaluating the use of tablet computers to replace large volumes of paper manuals and charts now carried by pilots. (GTRI Photo)

 

“The Air National Guard asked us to conduct an operational utility evaluation of various tablet computers to determine whether they were feasible as electronic flight bags and whether  standardized hardware and software platforms could be selected for use by all of their squadrons,” said Byron Coker, a GTRI principal research engineer who is leading the project.

This work is supported by the Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center in Tucson, Ariz. Coker’s collaborators on this project include research engineer Thomas Glimmerveen and student Joshua Fordham, who are based in GTRI’s Warner Robins, Ga. Field Office, and research engineer Thomas Norris, who is based in GTRI’s Tucson, Ariz. Field Office.

“Air Combat Command requested that we execute an operational test of the electronic flight bag due to some critical paper flight products that will no longer be printed in 2015,” said Lt. Col. Rogelio Maldonado of the Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center. “The electronic flight bag has shown great promise and is likely to revolutionize cockpit management by consolidating flight products and providing the means for quickly navigating all resources.”

With GTRI’s assistance, pilots of A-10 and F-16 aircraft have executed flight simulator missions to test and evaluate two commercially-available tablets loaded with a software app developed by GTRI researchers called “QuickTOs” and commercially available flight planning apps. The flight simulator missions include emergencies, such as a cockpit fire or engine failure, which require the pilot to refer to the “QuickTOs” app that that enables quick access to technical orders.

“Technical orders can contain several hundred pages of safety procedures, technical information and instructions pertaining to the aircraft that need to be flipped through quickly in an emergency to find the relevant information and checklists,” explained Coker. “We electronically formatted the publications for our app and added links so that the documents could be easily and quickly organized, navigated and read on a tablet.”

The flight simulator missions also include executing landing approaches in simulated weather conditions that require the pilot to use instrument approach procedure charts. These charts are frequently updated due to the constantly changing environment around airports and must be reprinted and distributed to pilots each time a new version becomes available. Using electronic approach charts could greatly reduce paper and printing costs and increase the ease and speed of obtaining up-to-date charts. To date, more than a half-dozen multi-hour flight simulator missions have been conducted, each with several emergency procedures performed.

Before the flight simulator tests began, the GTRI researchers conducted a market survey of tablets that could be used as electronic flight bags. They evaluated 24 touch-screen devices commercially available based on the following criteria: battery life, weight, ruggedness, night-vision goggle compatibility, glove compatibility, performance, physical size, screen size and software compatibility. They evaluated devices that operated on Android, Apple iOS and Hewlett-Packard operating systems.

Air National Guard pilots then evaluated the tablets that scored highest against the criteria and judged each device’s ease-of-use and functionality as an electronic flight bag. The pilots judged whether each device functioned better, the same or less well than the standard paper publications and whether each device would support the basic requirements for flight and possibly even provide information not previously available.

As a result of the evaluations, two tablet computers were selected for flight simulator testing. Future work on this project will include additional flight simulations, followed by electromagnetic interference tests and real flight testing of the devices.

“Once we get the necessary approvals to begin flight tests, we will conduct them for about a year to gather enough data so that we can provide our recommendation for how the Air National Guard should move forward with fielding electronic flight bags,” said Coker.

Based on the initial simulator missions, Coker believes the electronic flight bag could be integrated as part of the pilot’s kneeboard – a clipboard strapped to the pilot’s knee that keeps flight-pertinent information, such as charts, maps and approach plates, close at hand during flight.

 

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: Air National Guard, Georgia Tech, GTRI, innovation, National Guard, research

September 30, 2013 By AMK

NIST awards pilot grant to Georgia Tech Research Institute for ‘Trustmark Marketplace’

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a pilot grant to the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in support of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC).

NSTIC is a White House initiative to work collaboratively with the private sector, advocacy groups and public-sector agencies to catalyze an “Identity Ecosystem” in which technologies, policies and consensus-based standards support greater choice, trust, security and privacy when individuals, businesses and other organizations conduct sensitive transactions online.

Under the grant, GTRI will develop and demonstrate a trustmark framework that facilitates cost-effective scaling of interoperable trust across multiple Communities of Interest (COIs) within the Identity Ecosystem and enhances privacy through transparency and third-party validation.  A trustmark is a rigorously defined, machine-readable statement of compliance with a specific set of technical or business/policy rules.

Trustmarks have the potential to enable wide-scale trust and interoperability within the Identity Ecosystem by helping to foster transparency and widespread operational convergence on the specific requirements for each dimension of interoperability, including communication protocols and profiles, cryptographic algorithms, business-level user attributes for access control and audit purposes, and various levels of policy such as privacy policies and practices.

Trustmarks can also reduce the complexity of the Identity Ecosystem’s trust landscape, and turn what would otherwise be a collection of poorly interconnected “federated identity siloes” into a more cohesive trust environment. In addition, trustmarks can enhance privacy within the Identity Ecosystem by helping COIs define clear, concise and rigorous privacy rules that participating agencies must follow.

The pilot project will leverage GTRI’s experience with the Federal Identity, Credentialing, and Access Management (FICAM), State Identity, Credentialing, and Access Management (SICAM), and Global Federated Identity and Privilege Management (GFIPM) standards.

It will also build upon the National Identity Exchange Federation (NIEF) (https://nief.gfipm.net/), an operational identity federation that GTRI has developed and manages on behalf of the U.S. Justice and Law Enforcement community. In implementing the pilot, GTRI plans to partner with the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), and one or more current NIEF member agencies, such as Los Angeles County and the Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS).

“The NSTIC Identity Ecosystem vision is huge and can provide significant improvements in online security and trusted commerce. The challenge is to effectively engage and balance the large number of stakeholders and requirements within a scalable and agile Identity Ecosystem Framework that can thrive,” said John Wandelt, chief of the Information and Enterprise Architecture Division within GTRI’s Information and Communications Laboratory.

“GTRI and its partners are honored and excited about the opportunity to be a part of NIST’s important work and help provide solutions through NSTIC,” said Wandelt, who also serves as executive director of the National Identity Exchange Federation (NIEF).

The Georgia Tech Research Institute solves complex problems through innovative and customer focused research and education. Established in 1934, GTRI is Georgia Tech’s non-profit applied research arm with more than 1,700 staff, 17 locations, eight laboratories and annual contract awards exceeding $300 million. For more information, visit www.gtri.gatech.edu.

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: Commerce Dept., Georgia Tech, GTRI, identity, NIST, research

March 18, 2013 By AMK

Georgia Tech’s OSHA program awards certificates to 18 Robins AFB employees

Georgia Tech Professional Education has awarded occupational safety and health certificates to 18 employees at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Ga., extending Georgia Tech’s relationship with the U.S. Air Force.

The Robins employees completed a series of courses to earn the professional certificates, which were awarded in late February 2013.

Georgia Tech Professional Education partnered with Georgia Tech Research Institute, the university’s applied research arm, to offer the training at Robins. For more than 30 years, Georgia Tech’s occupational safety and health program has helped keep workers safe, growing to offer 43 short courses, eight professional certificates and customized training.

“We are proud to offer our depth of experience and knowledge of OSHA regulations in this partnership with Robins Air Force Base. By learning onsite, the employees have received certificates from a major engineering school recognized nationally and internationally,” said Daniel J. Ortiz, M.P.H., C.S.P., manager of GTRI’s Occupational Safety and Health Program Office.

The training program saved the base $237,000 in travel and other costs and resulted in new safety programs implemented across the facility, according to David Decker with the 78th Air Base Wing Safety Office at Robins. The 78th Air Base Wing, OSHA and the American Federation of Government Employees Local 987 were essential to Georgia Tech Professional Education’s ability to provide the training.

“This is a critical partnership,” said Brig. Gen. Cedric George, commander of the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex. “I know it wasn’t easy. Georgia Tech doesn’t do easy.”

In 2011, Robins reached out to GTRI professionals, who are Georgia Tech Professional Education instructors, for assistance with occupational safety and health. Safety is a priority at the installation, which has more than 20,000 civilian and military personnel in a variety of careers.

Georgia Tech Professional Education instructors worked with senior leadership from the 78th Air Base wing and from the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex (WR-ALC), which provides depot level maintenance for USAF aircraft and systems.

Beginning with two courses in occupational safety and health, Georgia Tech Professional Education and GTRI formed a relationship with Robins around the need to develop and implement a safety management system. An additional nine courses, including the OSHA Guide to Industrial Hygiene and Machinery and Machine Guarding Standards, were taught on base, helping employees earn the certificates.

The courses included classroom lectures and hands-on training. The instructors incorporated challenges Robins employees faced into the class material.

“We were able to use examples based on our experience at Robins,” said James B. Howry, senior research associate at GTRI’s Electronic Systems Laboratory. “We integrated our subject matter expertise as we understood their challenges.”

The savings to the taxpayer was “tremendous,” said Roger Hayes, chief of WR-ALC Safety, who leads a team of 30 safety professionals overseeing over 16,000 workers. He estimates he was able to spend about $4,000 on one course for 20 employees, instead of paying $1,500 per employee to attend a course away from the base.

“The relationship with Robins Air Force Base is a great example of how Georgia Tech Professional Education can meet an organization’s specific needs and provide affordable training by bringing courses to worksites,” said Myrtle I. Turner, Ph.D., M.P.H., C.E.T., director of Georgia Tech’s OSHA Training Institute Education Center, which is one of four original centers across the U.S.

During the February ceremony at Robins, 17 employees were awarded an Industrial Safety and Health Certificate, and one individual received a Construction Safety and Health Certificate.

“Robins Air Force Base respected and identified with the professional credentials that come with a certificate from Georgia Tech,” Howry added.

The program also offered the opportunity to further strengthen safety education, while continuing to improve work processes and assist employees.

“It’s been awesome,” said Lt. Col. Nate Tart, of the 78th Air Base Wing. “With such a diverse group of people in the course, it helped make it a better experience. Some of us have a flight safety background, and it was good to hear the industrial safety perspective.”

Having the opportunity to earn a professional certificate from a prestigious university shows an employer’s dedication and commitment to safety and the workforce, said Robert Tidwell, 402nd Commodities Maintenance Group aircraft sheet metal mechanic and an American Federation of Government Employees Local 987 safety representative.

“When I’m out in the workforce, I can offer insight and help resolve safety concerns or put out safety issues that will potentially keep people from getting hurt,” he said. “Our ultimate goal is safety for our workforce.”

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: Air Force, cost reduction, cost savings, education, Georgia Tech, GTRI, OSHA, safety, training

January 11, 2013 By AMK

Georgia Tech improves voting accessibility for injured veterans

More than 50,000 men and women have been wounded in military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many of these recently injured veterans are in rehabilitative centers where they face barriers that prevent them from voting independently, securely and privately.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, along with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Operation BRAVO Foundation, are developing ways to provide a more accessible voting system for service members to use within treatment facilities.

“Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have different types of injuries than the general population with disabilities,” said Brad Fain, head of the Human Systems Engineering Branch at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “The range of accommodations they need to participate in elections differs. We need to better understand the barriers faced by veterans with disabilities to make the electoral process more accessible.”

After two years of study and hundreds of interviews with recently wounded vets, Fain and the research team found veterans with disabilities are likely to experience difficulty with voting because of inaccessible polling places, complicated ballot design and voting technologies that are not compatible with their needs.

Traumatic brain injury, the “signature injury” of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, can impact cognitive ability, independence, memory and attention span. Other common injuries among service members include mobility impairments or amputation of limbs, visual and hearing loss, sensation changes and post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which can affect voting activities.

Researchers recommend taking simple steps to improve voting access such as simplifying the ballot design and removing distractions during the voting process.

They also recommend implementing a portable, tablet-based voting system with numerous control options. Fain is developing a marking tool that would be able to read the ballot in a format the individual could understand, allow the person to mark the ballot and then export it to the voting commissioner in an acceptable manner.

While this innovative technology shows potential, the researchers point out that advancements in technology alone will not solve the problem of voting accessibility for wounded veterans.

“A technology solution is not going to be useful unless we have the policy solutions, security issues and support services that allow people to vote privately, securely and independently,” Fain said.

Georgia Tech researchers will continue to study these issues in a larger study on voting among the general population with disabilities.

“It’s an honor to help solve this problem so all Americans with disabilities have the best opportunity possible to cast a private, secure and independent vote, especially veterans since those injuries were obtained in service to their country,” Fain said.

In 2010, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in partnership with GTRI and the Operation BRAVO Foundation, received a grant from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for this project.

For More Information:

Read the “Making Voting More Accessible for Veterans with Disabilities” report.

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: Georgia Tech, GTRI, research, technology, veterans

July 19, 2012 By AMK

Georgia Tech and the VA collaborate to accelerate health IT innovation

Two major non-commercial health information technology organizations are working together in a new vendor-neutral health IT innovation network designed to stimulate development of new ideas and shorten the time required to bring new solutions into practice.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) Innovation Sandbox Cloud and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Interoperability and Integration Innovation Lab will collaborate to address interoperability issues, accelerate the development of integrated health IT solutions, provide an unbiased environment for testing new products and help train the IT workforce needed to move the industry forward. Georgia Tech is believed to be the first academic organization to connect directly to VHA’s system.

The two organizations have signed a memorandum of understanding that will formally connect innovation facilities and allow researchers from both organizations to collaborate on specific projects. The agreement also facilitates the use of the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), VHA’s electronic health records system, to test new products and solutions. VistA is already used to help manage care for 7.6 million active U.S. veterans across VHA’s nationwide health care system and is widely considered to be the best electronic health records system in operation.

“We believe that together we can do something really unique and important,” said Steve Rushing, director of Health@EI2, a health care innovation initiative at Georgia Tech. “By connecting our interoperability innovation lab to the VHA’s Sandbox Cloud, we can create joint project teams to work on specific challenges, work together to address industry issues and develop best practices, and test applications designed to run with the VA’s robust electronic health records system.”

VHA and Georgia Tech share many of the same goals and, by working together, the organizations can leverage investments made by VA and other federal agencies, noted Robert Kolodner, M.D., who led development of VistA during his 28-year career at the VA. Kolodner serves as a strategic advisor to Georgia Tech on its health care IT initiatives.

“This collaboration enables decades of health IT advances by VA to be combined with investments by other federal agencies and with resources from both the state and private sectors,” Kolodner said. “Together, they create a robust, diverse education and simulation environment. We can train the health IT workforce necessary to succeed as our national health IT initiatives improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities across the nation.”

Georgia Tech’s Interoperability and Integration Innovation Lab (I3L) was established to stimulate new ideas in health IT by creating a standards-based environment in which resources can be shared, barriers reduced, and new products more rapidly developed and introduced. Beyond addressing existing challenges for the industry, the lab will help participants – including academic and nonprofit organizations, as well as providers of both commercial and open source products – anticipate the trends and opportunities that will drive health IT in the future.

“The I3L will help us understand how to create conformance in interoperable systems and how in the future all of the health and medical devices and systems can be tied together to create a seamless view of what’s happening to the patient,” said Jeff Evans, deputy director of the Information and Communications Laboratory in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “It will take us into the future of what health care is going to be, while also supporting the requirements of today.”

VHA’s Innovation Sandbox Cloud has a mission comparable to that of Georgia Tech’s I3L.

“VHA’s Innovation Sandbox Cloud serves as a virtual space to facilitate health IT innovation through collaboration and the development of new ideas, requirements and products that can become solutions within VistA,” said Craig Luigart, chief officer, VHA Office of Health Information. “Our health data systems interconnection with Georgia Tech’s I3L Sandbox is a landmark in the government’s Health Information Technology Innovation and Development Environments (HITIDE) initiative.” The HITIDE initiative supports the development of interoperable health IT systems by leveraging existing federal agency health IT test bed environments for a cross-agency, virtual, active, innovation ecosystem.

Beyond connecting electronic health records systems and helping them share information, I3L will also link to Gwinnett Technical College’s health IT certificate program to help expand the workforce needed to build and maintain health IT systems. The initiative, funded by the U.S. Employment and Training Administration, connects students – including Veterans – to state-of-the-market training resources.

“Industry is telling us that it needs a health IT work force with a different set of skills than what is now available in the marketplace,” said Marla Gorges, associate director of Georgia Tech’s Health@EI2 program. “Through the Gwinnett Technical College program, I3L will give students access to a wide range of commercial and open source systems.”

Already, Gorges said, the resources of I3L have been used in Georgia Tech courses, helping students learn the real-world issues of health IT and propose solutions for them.

The overall goal for these initiatives is to improve patient care and community health through better exchange of information, Rushing noted.

“Other industries have transitioned to electronic systems, but none of them has faced the complexity of the health care industry,” Rushing said. “As the largest organization paying for health care services, the federal government has been pushing for an integrated health care information system that would allow patient records to be shared by all those caring for a specific patient.”

Georgia Tech’s expertise and experience with interoperability issues in other areas – such as connecting criminal justice information networks in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice – provides a foundation for what it expects to do in health care IT. Its connections to designers of medical devices, information security specialists and developers of wireless communications systems at Georgia Tech and elsewhere will also help anticipate the future of health care information systems.

“We are standing up a health care test bed that builds on all our work in the past with how to tie networks together and ensure that they’re set up in such a way that regardless of the network and the information exchange elements, we can still share elements and databases,” Evans said. “We are setting up not only an interoperability lab, but also an environment where we can see how this will work in the future.”

About the I3L: The I3L is a standards-based facility located at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The lab will test and evaluate cutting-edge health IT (HIT) software innovations originating from industry, researchers, faculty and students, inventors and other sources. The I3L is funded in part by the federal government’s Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge, a tri-agency competition initiated to support the advancement of 20 high-growth, regional industry clusters. The overarching goal is to achieve higher-quality, lower-cost and more patient-centric health care throughout the state of Georgia.

About Enterprise Innovation Institute: The Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute helps companies, entrepreneurs, economic developers and communities improve their competitiveness through the application of science, technology and innovation. It is one of the most comprehensive university-based programs of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization and economic development in the nation.

Enterprise Innovation Institute
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 310
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986)(ude.hcetagnull@nootj) or Abby Robinson (404-385-3364)(ude.hcetag.etavonninull@ybba).

Published: June 25, 2012

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: EI2, GTRI, health records, VA

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