NASA Tech Briefs Insider Blog

NASA/Industry Partnership Results in New Decision-Making Software

As part of NASA’s Partnership Seed Fund program, Goddard Space Flight Center is integrating the ILIADS software, a geospatial information system (GIS) it developed for lunar applications, with Questus(TM), a management and planning software tool developed by United Space Alliance (USA) for space shuttle operations. The integration will result in a new decision-making application that NASA can use to plan and carry out future robotic and crewed missions to the Moon.

Using internal research and development funding, Goddard technologists modified commercial off-the-shelf GIS software typically used in terrestrial applications to design ILIADS (Integrated Lunar Information Architecture for Decision Support). It gives users access to 3D lunar crater scenes, topographic contour maps, surface distance and elevation measurements, in situ resource and hazard maps, and historical mission data and other useful datasets.

The ILIADS-Questus software will let mission planners directly apply scientific data gathered from remote-sensing satellites and other sources to select potential landing and habitat sites. Ultimately, the tool will support human exploratory sorties on the lunar surface later in the next decade. USA can commercialize the new product, particularly in its work developing NASA’s next-generation trans- portation system, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). Goddard and USA expect to complete the integration of ILIADS and Questus in time for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a Goddard-led mission that will spend a year mapping the Moon after its launch in 2008.

Read the full story here.

Software Enables First Responders to Help Those With Special Needs

First responders will be able to better prepare individuals with special needs thanks to new open-source software developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab. The Special Population Planner software is an extension to commercial ArcView Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, and provides a database for creating a list of individuals with special needs throughout a given emergency planning area. Individuals with special needs include the physically, mentally, and medically disabled; those without transportation; and latchkey children.

The project began in 1998 with funding from the U.S. Army under the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program for the seven areas across the country where chemical weapons are stored. These areas have emergency evacuation plans for neighboring residents, and Argonne researchers were asked to gather data and develop software to help identify and plan for individuals with special needs. The study covered most of a six-county area with 115,000 households and 275,000 residents, of whom about 9 percent reported special needs.

Said Ed Tanzman, project lead for Argonne’s Decision and Information Sciences Division, “Hurricane Katrina highlighted the national problem of emergency planning for persons with special needs, when a number of residents — many disabled persons or their caregivers — were trapped for days at the Superdome because of evacuation problems.” The Army recognized a need to make the software available to all emergency planners. Using the software, emergency planners for any area can begin building a database of persons with special needs and developing emergency response or evacuation plans to accommodate them.

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