What is the TSO? What are its main goals?
A Tactical Situation Object (or TSO), is one of the key means to reach a minimum level of interoperability between agencies during the disaster and emergency operations. This minimum level is defined for the purpose of the 1st version of the TSO, but in the future, the TSO could be extended progressively, allowing agencies to collaborate more efficiently during operations by sharing a timely and comprehensive common operating picture.
The TSO provides the capability to exchange pieces of information which participate to the Common Operational Picture, but it is not intended to provide all detailed information. So it reflects some choices for trying to have it as simple as possible while being relatively complete. It is not possible, under these conditions, to reflect the complete interoperability model used by NATO, despite the fact that it was one important source of inspiration.
How to use a TSO
The nature of the information featuring in the TSO is very wide ranging. The various users or components of an information system may only be interested in parts of the information carried or stored in the TSO. Hence, the structure of the TSO allows such a flexible use by these components or users.
The TSO has two key intended usages:
| 1. | Its primary use is the exchange of information between two (or more) different operational entities such as: |
| a. | Entities from different command and control levels of the same organization (such as control rooms from different regions, at different hierarchical levels, etc.), |
| b. | Entities from different command and control levels from different organizations (such as control rooms from the Police, the Fire Service, the Ambulance, the Local Authorities or the non-governmental organizations, etc.). |
The nature of this exchange presumes that the information contained in the TSO is as complete as possible. For this kind of exchange, the sender of the TSO shall assume that the connection with the recipients may be broken in the future, and in consequence that the information which is contained in the TSO shall be as complete as possible. For this usage, the TSO shall be self explanatory.
| 2. | Its underlying use is the exchange of information between components within an OASIS node. In this instance, the components of the node are connected to one another within a local network and have access to the same databases. In this case, the use of an extended and/or comprehensive TSO is neither necessary nor useful. A “lighter” version of the TSO will be used and shall contain only the identification of the objects which are interesting for the invocation. |
Information stored in the TSO
The Tactical Situation Object contains the following information:
| 1. | Identification information: describes who the originator of the information is and when the information was created. If an instance of a TSO is related to one or several other instances of TSO, it contains a list of links to those instances. Identification information are the only mandatory information in the TSO. Obviously, if there is nothing else, the TSO instance is useless, so it should include at least an event, resource or mission. |
| 2. | Description of the event: the TSO is one solution to provide to other entities its own view of the event. In consequence, this section of the TSO provides the following information: the type of the event, its extent, the number of casualties, the consequences on the environment, its criticality, etc. |
| 3. | Description of the resources: each agency has resources which could be shared with the others, and is interested to know which resources are already used, which resources are available. This part of the TSO provides information on the list of resources (including the human resources), their availability, their position, and their capabilities. |
| 4. | Description of the missions: it is also very important to inform others of activities which are in progress or which are foreseen, for co-ordination to be efficient. This section of the TSO provides information on the tasks which are on-going, their status, the teams and resources engaged, their planning, etc… |
Reference Information
The following documents are useful for understanding the global context of the Disaster and Emergency domain, as well as the goals of the OASIS project:
[RD-1] |
OASIS_TA21_RPT_072_DSF: OASIS Executive Summary |
[RD-2] |
OASIS_TA21_RPT_007_CRU: Terms and Acronyms |
The OASIS (the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, not to be confused with our project http://www.oasis-open.org/) consortium has proposed two standards which are also directly related to the Disaster and Emergency domain. Both standards have potential relationships with the TSO that we propose:
| 1. | The CAP (Common alerting Protocol) is a simple but general format for exchanging all hazard emergency alerts and public warnings over all kinds of networks. A CAP message can be provided as an alert, which will then justify the exchange of TSO messages. On the opposite, a TSO message (received from one rescuer in the field) can generate a CAP message. In this TSO document, we studied how a CAP message can be mapped with a TSO message |
| 2. | The EDXL RM (Emergency Data Exchange Language - Resource Messaging) effort will be designed to create messages that will allow local, tribal, state, federal and non-governmental agencies, stakeholders, and systems providers to rapidly share information on incident and event management resources. There also some cross coverage with the TSO, even if the goal of the two messages are different: the TSO is targeted to support the rescue operations (thus providing information on potentially useful resources, on allocated resources, etc.), and the EDXL-RM is intended to be use, even if the goal of the two messages are different: the TSO is targeted to support the rescue operations (thus providing information on potentially useful resources, on allocated resources, etc.), and the EDXL-RM is intended to be used at any time (including preparedness and recovery) for asking for a specific resource or a more general “capability”, and answering to such a request. This EDXL RM is still a proposal. It was not available when the TSO effort begun. The mapping between the TSO and the EDXL RM has not been studied yet. |
[RD-3] |
Common Alerting Protocol, v. 1.0 OASIS Standard 200402, March 2004 http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/emergency/ |
[RD-4] |
Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Standard Format For Resource Messaging Supporting the Disaster Management e-Gov Initiative DRAFT Version 3.1 - August 12, 2005 Prepared by: the EDXL Project Team |