Automated Decision Aids Applied to Operational Monitoring

Research in advanced surveillance and monitoring technologies is producing more fully automated and integrated systems that help manage the operator information overload while being flexible enough to address future requirements. With the use of modern techniques such as neural networks, feature extraction, computer vision, statistical and syntactical pattern recognition, anomaly detection, and knowledge discovery, monitoring systems have the ability to process information from multiple sources and to identify and track patterns of activity that are inconsistent with “normal” operations. Human operators can be alerted and provided with recommended courses of action. Automated decision aids facilitate intelligent surveillance of areas where normal human monitoring is unsafe, administratively difficult, or economically impractical to meet the challenges of ever-increasing interpretation of large amounts of complex data. The Guardian system is an intelligent reasoning system developed under the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Nonproliferation Research and Engineering (NN-20) program. Recent successful application of the Guardian reasoning system to automated route assurance of nuclear waste shipments enroute to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) will be presented. The WIPP Route Assurance Program (WippRAP) improves reliability in monitoring WIPP shipments by monitoring shipment locations in relation to specified routes and providing automated alerts and audible alarms when a shipment may require attention. Automated decision support augments the operator ability to interpret the ever-increasing amounts of data from simultaneous shipments and allows a faster, more focused response. Other Guardian applications highlighted include monitoring nuclear weapons dismantlement, personnel and material tracking, facility safety applications, and monitoring nuclear materials during transport and storage. Additionally, future application areas for Guardian and other reasoning and automated understanding systems will be discussed.