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Knowledge Management Reachback, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)

Reachback is a knowledge intensive process designed to provide field personnel (military, domestic emergency response) with the full power of DTRA's intellectual assets. Field personnel encountering a potential weapon of mass destruction (WMD) or hazardous material with WMD-like properties may not possess the depth of expertise required to assess and mitigate the threat. A typical scenario involves a person in the field contacting the DTRA operations center for assistance. WMDs are complex in their behavior and effects, experts from multiple specialist domains are often required to collaborate for an effective response.

DTRA's reachback request for information (RFI) volume is growing steadily and rapidly, approximately tripling every two years since 2002. As the Nation's primary source of information related to WMD, the Agency attempts to address the scientific and technical knowledge requirements of any RFI that it receives from military or civilian personnel. Reachback is a critical capability for modern, dispersed defense and emergency response personnel, who require an ever-increasing quantity and depth of information to effectively manage the complex scenarios they face in the field.

The objective of this project is to facilitate decision support for CBRNE events, including planning and exercises, and to help manage the steadily growing demand for scientific and technical support required to make good decisions. Ideally, forward personal would be supported by a wide range of subject matter experts corresponding to the range of topics implied by these events. However, such experts are scarce and cannot be deployed forward to any single area of operations. They should instead be available from a central location to support many geographically dispersed areas of operation. The central idea behind the project described here is to provide a virtual expert forward, an information system capable of fulfilling the technical and scientific information needs of forward-deployed personal. Achieving this objective requires techniques, processes, and tools for effective information capture, management, access, and fusion.

The Reachback II project extends the scope of the WMD Reachback project, which was commenced as a sub-task of the USP Knowledge Management (KM) task order. The purpose of the WMD Reachback project extension proposed here is to further develop the knowledge mapping concepts and prototype developed as part of the KM project's initial phase. Extensions will include reachback support for specific Agency scenarios and exercises; development of a prototype knowledge portal for information related to WMD events; and extensions to the prototype to incorporate details of the computing and communications infrastructure required to enable effective reachback for WMD events. The section below provides details of each of the project sub-tasks including priority, they are listed in priority order, and any constraints or potential roadblocks that present risks to successful task completion.

In general, we will keep in mind the KISS principle. This research is meant to support an important, time critical, and consequential DTRA activity. Solution approaches should be simple enough to conceivably implement in practice, but also leverage the cutting edge of technology and identified best practices.