Abstract

Advances in digital technology have improved educator access to information about their particular discipline. Homeland security is such a new discipline, however, that it does not have a large body of organized, domain-specific, public digital material. Consequently, educators and students will have to rely on resources from other specialties until the homeland security discipline matures enough to develop adequate discipline-specific, publically available digital sources. Fortunately, information from other domains can have a great deal of relevance. Unfortunately, the material is often not represented in a manner that reflects a relation to homeland security — which makes it a challenge to search and retrieve. The development of standards to represent homeland security data regardless of where it is stored can improve the ability to access digital materials, irrespective of discipline, that complement homeland security education and training programs. One near term solution is to develop a metadata standard that incorporates homeland security specific business metadata, which will allow the accurate description of any relevant digital artifact regardless of where it resides.

Author

Harry D. Tunnell IV

Colonel Harry D. Tunnell IV, USA (Retired) is principal at InRef, LLC. He is also an Informatics PhD student and member of the Grappa Lab at the Indiana University School of Informatics, Indianapolis. In addition to homeland security, Harry’s research interests are primary and secondary user experiences with health information technology and adaptive Personal Health Record interfaces for combat wounded patients. He also conducts research about the technology acceptance perspectives of military personnel and recently completed a pilot study regarding military end-users. He is completing work on a prototype database to improve training and implementation decision-making regarding technology used within military coalitions. Colonel Tunnell is a recipient of the Combat Infantryman Badge with Star, Master Parachute Badge with Combat Jump Device, and Purple Heart Medal. He has commanded twice in combat — an Airborne Infantry battalion in Iraq and a Stryker brigade combat team in Afghanistan. He has a graduate certificate in human-computer interaction and six vendor/vendor-neutral IT certifications.

Read This Article

Homeland Security Information Representation: A Case for Standardization

Suggested Citation

Tunnell, H. D., IV. (2013). Homeland security information representation: A case for standardization. Journal of Homeland Security Education, 2, 36-43, https://jsire.org/homeland-security-information-representation-a-case-for-standardization