A team comprised of Purdue University and Indiana University's School of Medicine has been named a Regional Visualization and Analytics Center by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. PNNL leads the Department of Homeland Security's National Visualization and Analytics Center, or NVACTM, which is bringing academic expertise to the nation's efforts to discover information that may warn officials of a terrorist attack. The team's center, or PURVAC, will perform research that will allow personnel at all levels of homeland security to quickly and effectively extract, visually analyze and synthesize information so that they can make quick and accurate decisions. The PURVAC team will focus on three homeland security areas: intelligence analysis; emergency planning and response; and healthcare monitoring and management. The Purdue and IUSM partnership is one of four university team selections announced. The others are the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Washington, and Pennsylvania State University. Stanford University was named another regional center in early 2005. DHS established NVACTM in 2004 to provide scientific guidance and coordination for the research and development of new tools and methods that DHS has identified as required for managing, visually representing, and analyzing enormous amounts of diverse data and information. Development of these visualization tools will enable analysts to more effectively identify signs of terrorist attacks in their earliest stages and ultimately prevent terrorist actions plots before they occur. The four core responsibilities of NVACTM are research and development; education; technology evaluation and implementation; and integration and coordination of research programs across government agencies. "The Purdue-IUSM team's proposal includes world-renowned researchers in electrical and computer engineering, computer science, management, statistics and medicine," said Jim Thomas, PNNL's chief scientist for information technologies and NVACTM director. "In addition, the existing Purdue University Rendering and Perceptualization Lab meets several DHS needs, demonstrating that they have the capabilities and expertise that are integral to our efforts for NVACTM. "The complexity and massive amounts of data and the variety of sources from which it comes impose unique challenges," added Thomas. "The goal of the center is to turn this sea of data into functional information to help users perform their jobs effectively." "The general idea is to tightly integrate analysis, abstraction and visual representation to enable an effective decision-making environment," said David Ebert, professor of electrical and computer engineering and principal investigator of PURVAC. "For instance, in the event of a catastrophic event, such as a chemical spill, natural disaster, disease outbreak or a terrorist attack, information will be coming from many sources – including images from cameras, data from sensors and simulations, and text documents from police and healthcare agencies. "It's hard for people to manage and analyze massive quantities of data in a timely manner, so the team will combine advanced visualization and simulation tools with techniques in areas such as statistics, data retrieval and database technology so that we create a comprehensive picture for the person who needs to make the decision." Ebert says in terms of something tangible, such as software, the team's greatest challenge will be creating a system that not only integrates different kinds of data, but also presents the information in ways that analysts, decision makers and emergency workers using various types of displays and requiring different kinds of information can readily see and understand. "It isn't that you take all the data and present it the same way to everybody. Instead, you really need to extract the relevant data and tailor how you display the information for each person, their task, and for the capability of their display," Ebert said. "If they have a cell-phone-type device or a PDA, you can't effectively display things the same way you would for large screens on desktops." In the area of healthcare monitoring and management, the team will develop advanced analytical tools to monitor and quickly recognize the signs of biological and chemical incidents. The interdisciplinary team will consist of about 20 Purdue faculty and graduate researchers from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Departments of Computer Science and Statistics, and the School of Management. The Center will be affiliated with four facilities in Purdue's Discovery Park, the university's hub for interdisciplinary research: the Purdue Homeland Security Institute, Cyber Center, e-Enterprise Center and Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering. The PURVAC will also collaborate closely with the Indiana University School of Medicine, with Dr. J. Marc Overhage as the primary researcher, Indiana Department of Homeland Security and the Indiana State Department of Health, as well as researchers at Simon Fraser University and The University of Stuttgart.