New Initiative: Systems Engineering Support

College Station, Texas, December 14, 2009 

KBSI is working with the Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD) to provide systems engineering program management support for the development phases of the CCAD Smart Transmission Test System (STTS). This initiative will allow CCAD to improve transmission and gearbox test capabilities by helping them acquire and install a state of the art test system infrastructure that includes re-configurable smart test equipment integrated with a streamlined test process. 

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KBSI Awarded ATLAS™ Phase II Add-on

College Station, Texas, November 20, 2009 

The ATLAS™ initiative is developing a unified modeling and experimentation framework that uses simulation, tradeoff analysis, and data mining analysis and optimization to improve the Army's current and future combat systems maintenance. In a new Phase II Add-on, KBSI is developing the ATLAS™ Go-To-War (GTWTM) simulation tool that utilizes data from the Army’s Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM) Collaborative Application Framework to generate Class IX (spare parts) demand forecasts for the CH-47 aviation platform.  The goal is to extend this capability across the UH-60, OH-58, and AH-64 aviation platforms and the Patriot and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) missile platforms. 

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New Phase I Contract: CYANIDE

College Station, Texas, October 28, 2009 

KBSI has been notified of a Phase I contract award for the Cyber Network Attack and Intrusion Detection and Recovery Environment (CYANIDE) initiative. The initiative will develop a customizable environment that enables the development, testing and deployment of out-of-band sensing, monitoring, and recovery technologies for combating centralized and distributed cyber attacks on a wide range of information and sensor networks.  CYANIDE will support a wide range of attack, detection, and recovery modules that are extensible and enable new research on cyber exploitation, cyber infrastructure protection, and distributed intrusion detection and recovery.

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TEMPL Awarded Phase II Contract

College Station, Texas, September 29, 2009 

The Phase II contract for the TEMPL initiative will allow KBSI to extend the Phase I work by designing and developing a methodology, a metadata model, and suite of tools that will unify the storage, transfer, and retrieval of T&E data and metadata across multiple systems, ranges, test articles, and test missions.  This work will apply state of the art information systems engineering, including the use of metadata repositories, ontologies and semantic web technologies, to support the metadata extraction of legacy data and metadata formularizations for ongoing and future DoD test missions. 

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DCP Receives Phase I Award

College Station, Texas, September 29, 2009 

KBSI has received a Phase I contract to design and develop a Disaster Case Management Platform (DCP) that supports the life cycle of disaster case management. DCP will provide advanced, customizable reporting and analytics to facilitate resource optimization, templates and statistical parameter estimation for different disaster scenarios, as well as the analysis of factors affecting the success of case management.  The DCP technology will improve the efficiency of the disaster case management (DCM) process by assisting relief agencies in identifying, delivering and closing out services to individuals adversely impacted by disasters nationwide. 

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MP2O Phase II Awarded

College Station, Texas, September 24, 2009 

KBSI has received a Phase II contract to continue the Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul Physics and Principles of Operation (MP2O) project work. The MP2O project is helping the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC) establish an organic, institutionalized industrial and systems engineering (ISEN) capability that will apply sound engineering principles and practices to the discovery and application of MRO enterprise policies, procedures, and techniques.  KBSI is also exploring collaborations with universities and other government depots with the aim of creating an MRO ISEN community of interest that includes a library of the principles, models, methods, and directed technologies that best support depot industrial and systems engineering practitioners. 

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KBSI On Contract for E3SAT Phase II

College Station, Texas, July 1, 2009 

KBSI's E3SAT initiative is designing and developing a tool suite that enables researchers to collect, integrate and data mine medical records, environmental exposures data, and deployment locations data in studying the factors involved in illnesses like Gulf War Syndrome that affect our service men and women.   The E3SAT technology addresses the military’s need for a more comprehensive data view that includes soldier deployment locations, durations, Military Occupation Specialty codes (MOS), environmental incidences and exposures, and soldier medical records, including the soldier's current signs and symptoms.  The abilty to collect, integrate, and analyze this data will improve the study of the environmental, epidemiological and etiological factors associated with post deployment illnesses.

Phase II of the project is focusing on technology transition.  As part of this work, KBSI is extending the data handling and data analysis capabilities, including developing the distributed data access and computational features, and extending the data mining algorithms and analysis capabilities.  KBSI will also integrate distributed data processing and data mining capabilities such as Globus, Hadoop, Weka4WS into E3SAT.

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ETHOS Secures Phase II Funding

College Station, TX, August 19, 2009

KBSI's Entropy-Trust-Homology Operational Security (ETHOS™) initiative has received Phase II funding from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The ETHOS method, by creating trust entropy metrics based on information flow and usage behavior among the different nodes of a sensor network, improves the functions of Security Information Management Systems (SIM), Event Correlation Systems (ECS), IDS, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), and vulnerability analysis. 

Phase II of the initiative will extend the method and use it as the foundation for designing and configuring an ETHOS experimental framework and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) test environment.

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KBSI Receives PCII Accreditation

College Station, TX, July 8, 2009

KBSI and its blood management web site BASIS (www.usbloodreport.net), created for the Office of Public Health and Science, has been certified by the DHS and DHHS PCII Program Manager as PCII accredited.

The Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program is an information protection program that enhances information sharing between the private sector and the government. The Department of Homeland Security and other federal, state and local analysts use PCII to analyze and secure critical infrastructure and protected systems, identify vulnerabilities and develop risk assessments, and enhance recovery preparedness measures.

BASIS is one of the first systems approved by DHS for categorical inclusion as PCII. The PCII version of BASIS was released on July 8, 2009.

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KBSI is Named Among Best of Corpus Christi Businesses

College Station, Texas, July 6, 2009 

Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. has been selected for the 2009 Best of Corpus Christi Award in the Custom Computer Software Analysis category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA). The USCA "Best of Local Business" Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community. U.S. Commerce Association (USCA) is a Washington D.C. based organization funded by local businesses operating in towns, large and small, across America. The USCA was established to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. The USCA works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups, and their mission is advocate for small and medium size businesses and business entrepreneurs across America.

SLAM DUNK -- KBSI receives Navy SBIR Phase I Contract

College Station, Texas, June 19, 2009 

KBSI was notified today that its Ship Lifecycle's Affordability Model (SLAM) was awarded a contract.  For this initiative, KBSI will develop a systems dynamics approach to cost modeling for early-stage lifecycle cost estimation.  This innovative approach will combine discrete, linear, and hierarchical cost-estimating methods with activity based costing and non-linear system dynamics modeling tools.  The approach will take into account variables that influence producibility and sustainability.  KBSI will develop a system in which the cost models will change over time (that is, refine themselves) based on the current state of other influencing variables, including current level of development and the estimated time to contract.

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New ONSITE Initiative Receives Funding

College Station, TX, June 11, 2009 

KBSI has officially received a contract from DARPA for the Open-Source Information Tactical Exploitation (ONSITE) initiative. ONSITE uses an innovative approach to Natural Language Processing that is focused on achieving state-of-the-art processing rates for the automated understanding of natural language in support of military tactical operations.  The proposed approach enhances processing throughput in the presence of noisy input data while achieving semantically rich extractions from unstructured, open source text.   

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GSA Contract Award

College Station, Texas, June 5, 2009

KBSI has been awarded a GSA IT Schedule 70 contract from the General Services Administration. KBSI's contract number is GS-35F-0503V.  The contract period of performance is June 5, 2009 through June 4, 2014.

New Phase II Award: P3

College Station, Texas, May 21, 2009

KBSI's Phase II proposal for the Parasitic Power Pack (P3) initiative has received a notification of award from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems (SPAWAR) SBIR office. The anticipated SBIR funding will allow KBSI to continue development of a maintenance free power pack that converts low frequency, large amplitude wave oscillations into a sustainable power source for floating ocean sensor buoys.  By providing a steady source of power, the P3 technology will have a direct influence on the length of time remote floating sensor buoys remain on-station, increase the communication capability of the Navy’s above and underwater assets, and nearly eliminate the exorbitant costs associated with replacing the batteries on floating sensor buoys. 

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KBSI's GTW™ Tool Supporting Army's COBRA Program

College Station, Texas, April 14, 2009

The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM) Integrated Materiel Management Center (AMSAM-MMC) will be applying KBSI’s Go-to-War (GTW™) simulation tool to generate Class IX (spare parts) demand projections for the CH-47 and UH-60 platforms in support of their Collaborating Online Between Resupply Activities (COBRA) program.  Future plans involve expanding the use of the GTW™ tool across all Army aviation and missile platforms.

Office of Naval Research awards KBSI contract to design an innovative utility-theoretic preference model for influence operations modeling. 

College Station, TX, March 31, 2009 

KBSI has been awarded a BAA contract from the Office of Naval Research entitled Hidden Enemy Network Influence Operations Contour Map (HEN-IO-Map) to design an innovative, utility-theoretic preference model for influence operations modeling.  HEN-IO-MAP meets the following needs in relation to influencing positive and discouraging negative behavior within an enemy network: (i) HEN-IO-MAP provides a visualization of the network identity space in the form of an influence operations contour map, allowing a decision maker to select the operations that encourage positive behavior and discourage negative behavior; (ii) HEN-IO-MAP simplifies the knowledge acquisition process by building decision models for hidden enemy network influence; and (iii) HEN-IO-MAP minimizes the amount of technical knowledge required by non-technical subject-matter experts (SME) to build social and cultural models for IO selection and assessment.

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KBSI Opens New Office in New Orleans

KBSI has established offices in Louisiana at the University of New Orleans Avondale Maritime Technology Center of Excellence located at 5100 River Road, Avondale, LA 70094 effective February 1, 2008.  The offices are co-located with the UNO MTC on the ground floor of the Northrop Grumman Ship Systems Gulf Coast Avondale engineering building.

The establishment of the New Orleans office provides KBSI with the capability to provide local support to shipbuilders and related industries on the Gulf Coast.  KBSI's areas of expertise applicable to the shipbuilding industry include process analysis and re-engineering using AI0 WIN® and ProSim®, automated shop floor planning and scheduling with the WorkSim® tool, material identification and procurement with MIDAPS, standardization of part catalogs using the Common Parts Catalog (CPC™), asset tracking and management with the RampMap® toolkit, wireless integration of production support functions with AWSM™ and material kitting and kit support with KCHR™.  KBSI can also provide support for production planning, providing training and tools to support shipyard planning functions.

KBSI has recently been awarded a subcontract to be on the Booz Allen PEO CS&CSS Team

Patents Pending

KBSI has filed for patents for POWER GENERATION APPARATUS, SYSTEMS, AND METHODS and NETWORK INTRUSION DETECTION.

KBSI Included in 2008 Edition of NASA's Spinoff Magazine

Spinoff magazine features successfully commercialized technologies developed under NASA funded SBIR initiatives. The KBSI work highlighted in the online edition focus on advanced planning, scheduling, and knowledge management technologies that help NASA meet the needs of their complex mission planning activities. Learn more about KBSI's work with NASA by reading the online Spinoff entry "Software Schedules Missions, Aids Project Management."

KBSI Named Hallmark of Success Company

NASA has recognized KBSI's technology development work under the SBIR/STTR program by naming KBSI a Hallmark of Success Company.

NASA’s Hallmark of Success consists of a collection of short videos about successful companies that have transferred or commercialized NASA-funded technology by knowledge sharing, technical assistance, intellectual property licensing, cooperative research and/or technology projects. 

KBSI personnel were interviewed concerning the following NASA projects; Knowledge Aided Mission Planning System, a software program demonstrating the power of planning and scheduling for missions; Ontology Driven Information Integration, a software program that model the meaning of terminology; Optimization Modeling Assistant, a software tool used to assist management in creating planning optimization models; Range Process Simulation Tool, which provided spaceport planning and scheduling support; and Toolkit of Enabling Adaptive Modeling and Simulation, used to develop, maintain, and reconfigure operations analysis models to spaceport.

A video was developed by NASA's Langley Research Center's SBIR STTR Office and highlights KBSI's work on a number of NASA funded projects. For more information about the Success Stories program, visit the NASA's Success Story Gateway.