Urban Security of Government and Public Institutions

Urban Security of Government and Public Institutions software is an Expert System that was developed for use by law enforcement, homeland security, and infrastructure sectors to address the following issues:

• Analysis of blast and fire impact and effect on structures/facilities and humans in complex urban environments
• Determination of mitigation measures to increase a facility's resistance to blast/fire attack, including modeling of structural retrofits and hardening of facility's layout
• Special security-oriented tasks, including VIP protection, and pre- and post-blast analysis.

Urban Security Screen Illustrations
(Click each picture for a magnified view.)

Urban Security software is an open-architecture learning expert system. It includes automatic tools that convert experimental data and empirical knowledge into new data and models. The software enables the user to either define new urban scenario using software’s native graphical user interfaces, or import existing scenarios previously designed. Urban Security possesses several unique features:

• Designed and built using state-of-the-art Expert System technology. Performs very rapidly (minute scale) estimation of thermal loads, blast loads, and combined thermo-blast load-induced damage effects in an urban environment. Uses intelligent modeling methodologies that combine nonlinear models of experimental and numerical data with heuristic expert knowledge and empirical formulas. Models are comprehensive and accurate in terms of blast wave propagation in complex urban geometry, blast ingress into building openings, internal blast propagation within a building, structural damage to a building, and progressive collapse. Combined thermo-blast damage effects involving both fire and explosions are also analyzed.

• Enables the user to rapidly construct 3D models of complex blast scenes using computer-aided design (CAD) and Geographical Information System (GIS) based user-friendly interfaces. User interfaces are associated with built-in libraries of buildings, materials, explosives and related information, as well as various editing tools. Interfaces communicate with users in both numeric and linguistic terms. Software uses built-in parameterized databases (libraries) of standard residential buildings/structures, threats, target hardening retrofits, components, and materials.

• Software has a comprehensive data-base depository of numerous models of blast, thermal impact, structural, human vulnerability and other cause-effect models of pertinent phenomena. It includes functionality-enhancing special models, such as structural degradation due to consecutive and/or concurrent multiple blasts, etc. It also includes models used by a special suite of security tools, including VIP protection, fast apprehension of perpetrators, an exclusion zone design to protect core occupants and businesses against an accidental explosion, etc.

• Software is an Adaptive Learning Expert System, allowing its models to continuously improve in terms of accuracy of prediction as more information (either implicitly embedded into experimental data or acquired from domain experts) becomes available. Software possesses editorial facilities to install the new data into its knowledge bases and data libraries.

• New and improved models, structure types, components, threats, materials, or retrofits based on experimental and numerical data can be added by the user to the data base, without the need to wait for the next official software release incorporating these new features. This capability provides considerable benefits in terms of future requirements, model upgrades, and overall software maintenance.