Contributions towards "AI for Social Good" Theme Austin Tate, 29-Oct-2019 ----------------------------------------- AI Planning for Emergency Response Our AI Planning Group explores representation and reasoning mechanisms for inter-agent activity to support teams of people, robots and computer systems working in a coordinated fashion. The group develops generic approaches by engaging in specific application areas especially for emergency response, crisis action planning, help desks and procedural assistance as well as command and control, space systems, manufacturing, logistics, construction, etc. The long term aim of the work is the creation and use of task-centric virtual organisations involving people, government and non-governmental organisations, automated systems, grid and web services working alongside intelligent robots, vehicle, building and environmental systems to respond to very dynamic events on scales from local to global. Links AI Planning Group Website: http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/plan/ The Helpful Environment Vision: http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/helpful-environment/ Images http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/cosar-ts/ Has some images I took at an exercise in the Firth of Forth - click on small ones to get full res versions. Please credit images as described there. http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/co-opr/ Image in there might be of use as it shows Inf people and collaborators in our simulated operations centre that was in Appleton Tower. ----------------------------------------- The Helpful Environment "The Helpful Environment" vision is of a future in which ubiquitous computing, sensor grids and networked systems combine to help the individuals, families, businesses, organizations, the public at large, regions and countries to be self supportive and mutually helpful with specialised resources for their daily lives, for help and assistance in emergencies. The vision, some international programmes which contribute to it, some of the organisations that are pursuing this vision and some of the Edinburgh projects and research that will we hope will help make it a reality are described in this paper: The Helpful Environment: Geographically Dispersed Intelligent Agents That Collaborate, Special Issue on “The Future of AIâ€, IEEE Intelligent Systems, May-June 2006, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp 57-61. IEEE Computer Society. Link http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/ix/documents/2006/2006-ieee-is-tate-helpful-env-as-published.pdf Images http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/files/2011/09/2010-05-13-Train-for-Success-1.jpg http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/files/2018/01/helpful-environment-logo-v2.png ----------------------------------------- Firegrid The FireGrid consortium brought together many bodies with an interest in improving response to fire emergencies. The FireGrid project aimed to harness the potential of advanced forms of computation to support the response to large-scale fire emergencies. The team included fire brigades, the UK regulatory bodies for fire safety, supercomputer centres in the UK and Singapore and other specialist groups and scientists. The challenges were in: * Sensing: Data collection from the emergency location with instantaneous and continuous relay to the emergency response system (involving a large array of sensors communicating with each other as a network and with the response system via the Grid); * Modelling: Simulation tools running in a predictive mode to model the evolution of the fire, establish its impact on the structure (and therefore predict the collapse), while also analysing the intervention alternatives and evacuation strategies; * Forecast: All simulations, analyses and communications to be achieved faster than the evolution of the emergency in real time; * Feedback: Processing of the continuously updated sensor and simulation data relayed back to the active response systems at the emergency location and to the emergency services to assist their intervention; * Response: Effective co-ordination of all intervention by a command and control system using an intelligent execution support aid. At the University of Edinburgh, AIAI provided expertise on the intelligent command and control user interface to present useful and actionable information to the emergency response coordinator. EPCC's role was to provide expertise on high-performance computing for simulation and modelling. Computational models of physical phenomena were developed, deployed and analysed on High Performance Computing resources to infer incident conditions by assimilating live sensor data from an emergency in real time - or, in the case of predictive models, faster-than-real time. The results of these models were then interpreted by a knowledge-based reasoning scheme to provide support information for the emergency responder. These models were accessed over a Grid from an agent-based system. The system carried out large scale fire trials, including the instrumented burning of disused tower block in Glasgow. The Firegrid project was the subject of much media interest and covered on a BBC TV Horizon programme. Link See http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/firegrid/ Image http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/firegrid/img/Firegrid-Book-Cover-Front.jpg ------------------------------------------ OpenVCE: Open Virtual Collaboration Environment and I-Room: Virtual Space for Intelligent Interaction A long term programme of research, development, evaluation and deployment of assets to support collaborative teams working in a distributed fashion without necessarily travelling to be collocated. The OpenVCE and I-Room concepts and approach supports agility and a green agenda via the creation, release and promotion of the availability of open source and open educational assets that have been used thousands of times and are provided in a number of academic, commercial and US government platforms as starter facilities for others to create their own tailored virtual collaboration, exhibition and event spaces. OpenVCE mixes social media, a shared content management platform and virtual worlds technology support communities. Part of this is I-Room technology - a "Virtual Space for Intelligent Interaction" - which has been provided in virtual worlds such as Second Life, OpenSim and Sinespace and can be used in Virtual Reality (VR). This award winning facility is designed for distributed brain storming style meetings and as a virtual operations centre. Links http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/i-room-a-virtual-space-for-intelligent-interaction/ Images http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/files/2011/09/2010-05-13-Train-for-Success-1.jpg http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/i-room/resources/e-response/img/2007-10-17-eResponse_001.jpg -------------------------------------------------- EASE: knowledge-based system for assessing workplace exposure to potentially hazardous new substances EU regulations require a manufacturer of a new substance to notify the appropriate authority, who will carry out a risk assessment of it. To aid this process, guidance is provided by the regulator for use by both authorities and manufacturers. A computer based guidance system was created which considered exposure to a substance in the workplace. Exposure assessment is an expert task, requiring an experienced occupational chemist, as many of the chemical and physical properties of a new substance are not known to the assessor a priori. For the system to be deployed, it had to incorporate best practice knowledge engineering techniques and, as there are safety-related considerations and AIAI and the HSE are committed to quality, the work had to be carried out in accordance with ISO9001 standards. AIAI and the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) worked together using the CommonKADS knowledge engineering methodology to model the task and capture the knowledge involved. Execution of the work was audited against TickIT criteria by Lloyds Register. EASE guides the user by offering a menu of appropriate choices whenever it needs information. When numerical values must be provided, e.g. vapour pressure, sanity checks are carried out. The user can always back-track and change the answer to an earlier question and a full explanation of the conclusion is always given as well as an explanation of why a particular question is being asked. The system has been widely distributed for use by authorities throughout Europe. Link http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/ease/