METHOD TO ENABLE THE HEARTBEAT BEACON FOR HOMELAND SECURITY AND DEFENSE INTEROPERABILITY & SYNCHRONICITY

Enabling an international Heartbeat Beacon for Homeland Security & Defense Interoperability & Synchronicity involves following a proven method / process and agreement on III building blocks / common denominators & 4 focus areas to standardize situational awareness (SA), event & alert data exchanges among N complex systems resulting in a global SA engine providing SA tone & SA as a service.

The Heartbeat Beacon addresses the data / temporal / symbolic interoperability challenge where unique / proprietary federal / military situational awareness (SA) systems and Telco networks supporting First Responder systems must agree on common, settings of three common denominators:

I. TCP/IP heartbeat protocol state data commonly timed, harvested & broadcast via beacon transponder technology.

II. Heartbeat network (re) configuration XML schemas / messages Efficient/BREW/binary... XML formatted small data files replacing military unique Tactical Data Link / Joint Variable Message Formats.

III. Common Alert Protocol CAP child schemas / data islands as a single, unified trigger for alerts by Community of Interest (COI)

The Heartbeat Beacon includes four focus areas:

FOCUS AREAS:

1. Establish consistent timing and synchronous state meta-data collection. Use the heartbeat / beacon’s (terms used interchangeably) intrinsic millisecond - 99 minute timing function to enable consistent, synchronized collection of raw state meta data (geo location, moving, halt, IP address, unit / organization Universal ID) BEFORE transfer to queues, SANS, dbase... prior to data fusion activities to improve filtering / data intelligence fusion. Use the heartbeat / beacon function (send to / get from devices, platforms...) as a subnet publish-subscribe e.g., OSD Horizontal Fusion to temporary holding areas awaiting harvesting by more advanced data collection / replication mechanisms that in turn rely on the heartbeat beacon mechanism e.g., OPenDAP, DARPA’s Cougaar (now commercialized), UMTS cellular, mesh networking standards ZIGBEE, ZWAVE….

2. “Maneuver the network” Use collected state meta data enabling network management of router Management Information Bases MIBs installing network router MIB updates for spontaneous (re) organization split, join, adds via multicast - anycast broadcasts of heartbeat harvested state meta data (geospatial location, status: moving, halt, URN, Org ID, Universal ID…)

3. Instantiate National Command Authority NCA chopchain - workflows – business logic over multicast / anycast IP using “true cots” tools in use e.g., Towersoft w/AgileDelta Efficient XML module embedded via the Common Alert Protocol CAP (XML child schemas and or data islands / embedded files ) to support the multicast, unicast, or anycast distribution of events, alerts via a unified alert / event trigger mechanism – the OASIS Common Alert Protocol with child schemas and / or data islands to accommodate disparate Communities of Interest (COI's)

4. Apply beacon technology to enable millisecond data exchanges vice 30 second screen scrapes while increasing / decreasing radius of disaster / event / alert radius represented by multicast zones corresponding to US / UK... five level advisory systems Enable across N complex systems, Y networks ("network of networks") and Z systems ("system of systems")