Technology:
Open Standards

The Knowledge Center® is designed using an open standards approach, stressing interoperability between disparate systems. Our goal is to provide our customers with a solution that fits within their needs, and takes advantage of existing investments they may have already made, while not preventing further investments outside of the KC in the future.

The KC is a framework that provides considerable value and functionality by itself, but will also make each customer's existing investments more useful and valuable as well. One of the key foundations to the architectural philosophy behind the Knowledge Center® is our decision to abstract data components from the presentation layer using our robust data engine.

The Knowledge Center® can integrate with a wide array of database back-ends, with current deployments using Microsoft's SQL-Server, Sybase's Database Server, and Oracle's Database Server. For our Geographic Information Systems (GIS) display we can use either ESRI's suite of products or Autodesk's MapGuide controls.

For our graphical user interface (GUI) we take advantage of Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) and leverage both Active Server Pages (ASP) and a .NET framework. Also, we implement an N-Tier architecture utilizing Common Object Model (COM) components.

Why the KC is the Right Choice for Incident Management

  1) Ease of use
  2) Ease of training
  3) Ease of future integration
  4) Extensive security configuration flexibility
  5) Daily use applications
  6) Tracking & managing resources
  7) Information sharing between shifts & through        chain of command
  8) Data fusion across multiple locations
  9) Executing emergency preparedness plans
10) NIMS compliance

Security & Safety:
Lessons Learned from Classified Work

Given the classified nature of many of our customers, robust security is a critical component of all of our systems. Our security is designed using a "Defense in Depth" approach. No anonymous access to the system is allowed. Instead, the KC implements a comprehensive permission model tailored to each organization's specific business rules.

We take advantage of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt communication over the Internet, and restrict all data access through a database Application Program Interface (API).

In addition to security, safety and reliability of the Knowledge Center® is also critical. In the middle of responding to an incident, the system simply cannot go down. Appropriate fault tolerance and redundancy needs to be in place to ensure 24/7 reliability.

Realizing these requirements, we enlisted the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute System Quality Requirements Engineering (CMU SEI SQUARE) group to vet the Knowledge Center® on three separate occasions spanning over a year's worth of investigation. The results from these collaborations are available on request.