SBIR-STTR Award

Beacons approach to this topic is to develop a Big Data/Fast Data algorithmic platform that brings the actionable intelligence of CBM+ to shipboard operations. Leveraging Beacons extensive software development background and shipboard system experience, the innovation of this effort will be focused at the intersection of data management, mathematics & algorithms, software design & development, and shipboard operational process understanding. The technical solution framework will integrate structured, semi-structured and unstructured data for use by an array of evolving tools and algorithms.

Benefit:
Beacon is creating a new approach to maintenance called Operational CBM+. Beacons technology operationalizes the equipment data available on board the ship in the moment, at the point of performance. The resulting impact is that information is available and useful where it is needed; mitigating the risk of connecting to and waiting for analysis reports from remote resources. While shore based subject matter expertise and recommendations are still seamlessly integrated into the experience, the shipboard ability to process data and algorithms within the lifelines of the ship enables deployed sailors to make informed context-based decisions to immediately improve mission performance and maintenance effectiveness. The operational challenge being addressed is two-fold. First, to bring together a more comprehensive set of both equipment and operational data and then secondly to leverage that data in real time onboard the ship to provide immediately available actionable intelligence. By expanding the scope and increasing the quality and speed of PHM results, both maintenance and mission outcomes will be improved while at the same time reducing operational cost. The proposed solution will increase work efficiency, capture performance and operational data, perform analytics for decision-making and provide seamless access to that information to various systems. As the world explores the Internet of Things and Big Data, Beacons technology will provide benefit not only to the US Navy but also in industries such as Transportation, Manufacturing and Energy.

Keywords:
CBM+, CBM+, Structured Data Analytics, Integration, Algorithmic Framework, Shipboard Operations, Prognostics Health Management, Unstructured Data Compilation, IOT

The objective of this Project (Proposal Number N171-071-0558) is to build a decision-support platform that leverages disparate data sources and multi-sourced end user applications in order to impact Situational Awareness, Mission Readiness and decision-making across a variety of ship and shore-based activites. The focus of the project is the creation and validation of an underlying technology framework that can provide services capability across disparate functional areas of a ship such as in energy management, bridge functions, maintenance and safety, personnel management, and engineering. Using a Microservices and Containers based architecture, the software platform will aggregate operational, machine and human data to provide in-the-moment information, knowledge and support for users. Sharing currently unavailable data across software applications in the form of services offers a business process capability for the inclusion, testing and delivery of third-party applications (or apps) to plug into the framework.

Benefit:
Beacon is exploring new approaches for building and deploying software to ships in the US Navy that create focused capability for a variety of areas. This approach has several

Benefits:
* The ability to get technology to the warfighter faster by decoupling monolithic applications into a series of services * The ongoing creation of software applications that can benefit from existing and new data as the data aggregation includes new microservices * A more flexible approach to data use by multiple applications whereby each application is built as new microservices that other application can access * Faster deployment of capability as well as decreased sustainment costs as new or updated software is deployed at a component level vs. the timeline and effort associated with a new release and deployment of a monolithic enterprise software system * Inclusion of a wider array of subject matter experts than is currently available because of the open nature of the framework and ability to containerize applications and share data The working prototype that not only provides capability to the warfighter, but is also a new approach to managing the deployment and sustainment of software technology for the US Navy. Shipboard use will, in near real-time, positively impact Situational Awareness, Mission Readiness, and decision-making. Shore-based programs will benefit from a platform to develop, test, certify, and deploy software.

Keywords:
containerization, algorithm, CBM+, plug and play platform, Shipboard, microservices, Big Data, Analytics