FORT CARSON, Colo. — James Allen, right, Joint Analytic Real-Time Visual Information Sharing System (JARVISS) program manager, provides instruction on the JARVISS system along with Ari Sinanis, instructor, during the first day of a two-day training event March 5 at Fort Carson. (Photo by Scott Prater)
By Scott Prater, Mountaineer staff
FORT CARSON, Colo. —In the midst of a hurricane or earthquake, emergency management planners can use all of the data they can get. Given such a scenario, every relevant detail matters and can affect every decision and action taken at the most crucial times.
Likewise, given an active shooter or terrorist event, law enforcement personnel would want information about the local area, so they could decide on the best course of action at the time.
The Army has a system in place that can aggregate such important data for those decision makers. Some of the system’s experts visited Fort Carson March 5-6 to train personnel on the latest version.
The aggregating system, Joint Analytic Real-Time Visual Information Sharing System (JARVISS), is a cloud-based computer program that can be accessed from a desktop (common access card enabled) or through a mobile application.
“If you’re dealing with a natural disaster, you’ll want to know where electrical transmission lines are coming into an installation, for example,” said James Allen, JARVISS program manager, Department of the Army Office of the Provost Marshal General. “You’ll also want any type of infrastructure data, and it would be helpful to see real-time traffic data. With JARVISS, a commander or emergency official can see over 1,400 data layers, which can be used in planning and response to any type of incident.”
Allen describes JARVISS as a “threat common operating picture,” a system that provides users with a stream of information about all-hazard threats, from criminal or terrorist activity to natural disaster threats.
“It provides all of the publicly available information and brings it together with definitive data sources from the DOD and any kind of data that would be relevant in planning and response to an emergency,” Allen said.
The training Allen and his team provided over the two-day event was designed to help local users navigate and improve their knowledge of the system.
Maj. Katherine Munoz, provost marshal operations officer, 4th Infantry Division, attended the training and said the JARVISS system has seen many enhancements since it’s roll out in 2017.
“I actually used JARVISS at my previous duty station (U.S. Army Africa),” she said. “Back then, there wasn’t much functionality and there was never a class on how to use it, plus I think there is more fidelity with a lot of the system features in CONUS (Contiguous United States).”
Since then, however, Munoz explained the system’s functionality has improved.
“Users can now include a multitude of data sources in their efforts to create a coherent intelligence picture,” she said. “Before this type of JARVISS system, we would have to count up law enforcement reports, for example, and use push pins on a map. But this system digitizes everything for you, and allows you to pull up information and threat data from multiple sources.”
Allen said he and his team have traveled to 76 military installations to provide the most recent JARVISS training and the events are designed for attendees to pass on training to their units or teams.