UQ software provides virtual help in U.S. defence exercise

University of Queensland-developed software is at the heart of a major U.S. military virtual disaster relief exercise conducted this month from six international locations.

Two of the three software products used in the exercise result from the $5 million WORLDS project developed by the University's Professor Simon Kaplan and the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC).

Joint military and research groups distributed throughout the planet from Brisbane to Hawaii, San Diego, Rome and Washington DC took part in the real time exercise, which simulated disaster relief for a virtual Bali hit by a hypothetical typhoon.

The "Pacific headquarters" was Professor Kaplan's room in the Department of Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering.

"The exercise involved co-ordinating everything from restoring power and water supplies to establishing field hospitals and providing security," Professor Kaplan said. "As part of the virtual exercise, the Australian Defences Forces supported the US military.

"This type of activity is extremely valuable, because it makes joint military exercises between countries more responsive and economical. Instead of flying teams of officers from many countries to one place, we can create a virtual command centre where distributed work groups can conduct computer-supported cooperative work. The distributed community can control the project without the physical need for people to work together."

Professor Kaplan said the WORLDS project was currently developing a "next generation" collaboration environment called Orbit which supported the development, evolution and working practices of work groups. The Orbit environment would allow seamless integration of tools and support for a wide range of collaborative activities.

He said the software, which has evolved over the past four years following his original work at the University of Illinois, had a variety of educational, medical and defence applications. "It's been used several times in pilot exercises but this is its first full exercise," he said. "The software is also being used by the University's new Centre for Online Health which is involved in undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education programs and innovative online health projects."

The WORLDS work is supported by the DSTC and the American military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which researches breakthrough information technologies for use in advanced defence applications.

Further information: Professor Simon Kaplan telephone 07 3365 2395 email: s.kaplan@dstc.edu.au