STAR-TIDES leverages collaboration, technology for global problem-solving

By day, Doctor Linton Wells is a distinguished research professor at the National Defense University's Center for Technology and National Security Policy, located at Fort McNair in Southwest D.C. His distinguished career includes stints in various Pentagon jobs and 26 years as a Naval officer.

But these days, his passion is for something called STAR-TIDES, Sustainable Technologies Accelerated Research, Transformative Innovation for Development and Emergency Support.

"STAR-TIDES is about sustainable support to distressed populations, post-war, post-disaster, impoverished" he tells Federal News Radio in an exclusive interview.

"What we're trying to do is put together public-private, whole-of-government, transnational talent bases, to share knowledge to achieve unity of action when there's no unity of command."

In other words, using a collaboration of technology experts to help out in situations like the post-Hurricane Katrina Gulf Coast, or the aftermath of the Indonesian tsunami, or humanitarian needs in war-torn areas like Bosnia and Afghanistan.

The heart or STAR-TIDES is a network, that extends from Austral-Asia, to Latin America, to Northern Europe. We have Dutch non-governmental organizations, we have the Red Cross, we have universities in Singapore, we have representatives from the U.S. Marine Corps, Johns Hopkins University, Engineers without Borders. So, the idea is to put together as diverse a talent pool as you can, and to be able to draw on that network to provide answers to people who have questions.

Wells describes his role as that of a "coordinator" in the STAR-TIDES program, as a representative of the United States government as a whole, and not specifically NDU or the Department of Defense.

Over the last several years, the STAR-TIDES program has quietly gathered the expertise of both governments and the private sector around the world to serve as a collaborative information network on such basic challenges as food and shelter; clean water; sustainable energy; power, and communications, for areas in crisis, or where local governments are unable to provide those needs. Partners communicate by way of e-mail, and web 2.0 collaboration tools like wikis designed to foster quick exchanges of information and expertise for both short and long-term needs.

Dr. Wells talked about the yearly STAR-TIDES demonstration project held just a few weeks ago at Fort McNair in conjunction with the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting here in DC. It is designed to demonstrate the nimble, emergency response capabilities developed by STAR-TIDES partner organizations.

All activities have to be independent of the power grid. All communications have to be live. We're not interested in static displays, or PowerPoint. We started with a cold, dark, quiet field on Tuesday, and by the end of the second day, we had four satellite networks up and running independent of the power grid. Seventy percent of the site was powered by portable wind and solar (energy). We put in less than $5,000 of government seed money for the demonstration. We got more than $1.7 million of private-sector engagement.

Wells says that in addition to their yearly demo at Fort McNair, STAR-TIDES has been making good in the real world on their mission to creatively apply technology to the world's special needs.

In one case, a STAR-TIDES project helped facilitate the recent Presidential elections in Afghanistan last August. Wells explained that this was one of several quarterly field demonstrations conducted with the Naval Postgraduate School Special Operations Command at Camp Roberts, California.

"This year," he went on to say, "the National Geospatial Agency (NGA) has dramatically enhanced the ability to share imagery information with civil and military mission participants in Afghanistan."

Wells explained that the STAR-TIDES project was able to take NGA-provided satellite imagery of regions of Afghanistan, and, with the help of corporate partner, GOOGLE, was able to break the 500 gigabytes of map data into smaller-sized "tiles" that could be read on laptops in the field. That action made it possible for NGOs, military, and civilian partners to use the information to monitor the Afghan elections. He says they then took open-source mapping tools to plot the locations of polling places throughout the country, and overlay other useful information pertinent to the election.

In addition, he says, with the use of simple text-based social collaboration messaging tools like Twitter, GeoChat, or SMS (simple messaging system), the STAR-TIDES partners were able to update the maps in near-real time, allowing officials to have improved situational awareness of what's happening on election day, for example, to track steady increases in voting at individual locations, and even acts of violence against civilians.

The program also gained the recognition of the U.S. Agency for International Development as an excellent example of public-private partnerships in public diplomacy.

Wells says that the efforts are underway to once again provide the STAR-TIDES- generated geospatial information support for the upcoming Afghan Presidential runoff elections, slated to take place next month.

------
On the Web:

STAR-TIDES - star-tides.net

NDU - Dr. Linton Wells biography

Govt. Computer News - National security and social networking are compatible

(Copyright 2009 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)