Visual Analytics for Command, Control, and Interoperability Environments

About VACCINE

The amount of information gathered during a crisis can be crushing if not managed correctly. DHS views this new Center’s research and education in visualization as critical to the protection and security of America and her allies. In the event of a catastrophe such as a chemical spill, natural disaster, disease outbreak or a terrorist attack, information will be coming from many sources, such as camera images, data from sensors and simulations, and text documents from police and health-care agencies. VACCINE will focus on education, research, development, and deployment of interactive visual analytic environments for communicating and disseminating information and deriving insight from the massive homeland security data deluge.

VACCINE Annual Report - Year Three can now be viewed below

VACCINE Annual Report - Year Two can now be viewed below

• VACCINE Period 2 Annual Report
• Addendum A-Presentations
• Addendum B-Publications
• Addendum C-Various Reports

VACCINE Annual Report year one can be viewed here.

VACCINE Strategic Plan can be viewed here.

• Innovation and Science Leadership – We will research, evaluate, and transition new methods and techniques for real-time, scalable, interactive visual-computational analysis, exploration, planning, hypothesis testing, management, and decision making from the data deluge faced by all homeland security personnel. We have assembled a team of the world’s science leaders in visual analytics, media-specific analytics, geographic information science, information synthesis, data and knowledge management, scalable, data intensive computing, human-computer interaction, cognitive science, usability engineering, and communications to extend the science of visual analytics, as well as address the great challenges of CCI within homeland security.



• Transition and Engagement – A key foundation of VACCINE’s approach and success is engagement of partners to provide real-world grounding, impetus, validation, evaluation, and transition of our work. We will engage a wide range of partners to ensure two vital aspects of our work:
  • Cognizance of the variety of needs, issues, situations, and operational environments to ensure relevance of our activities and remove impediments for transition of technology, training, and education.
  • Clear mission need, feasibility, and technology transition plan addressing needs from the local to international level.
  We have local, state, federal, and international partners in Canada, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. We will also continue to work with corporate partners and national labs to transfer our technology from research demonstrations on real-world-scale problems to hardened, commercially deployable and viable applications.



• Educational Innovation, Leadership, and Outreach – We will educate the next generation of homeland security professionals to harness the power of visual analytics and advanced computational tools to enable them to make effective decisions from the mass of multisource, multimedia data they will face in their careers. We will develop innovative educational techniques for visual analytics and decision making. We will continue to create the leading international repository and resource for visual analytics educational and training material, as well as practical lessons-learned/best practices CCI material. We will develop K-12, undergraduate, and graduate visualization and analytic homeland security educational material and programs. We will lead technical education for visualization sciences integrated into the MSI network. Finally, we will develop and provide professional training and educational development materials and opportunities for homeland security professionals ranging from local emergency responders to state and federal officials.