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Enterprise Wide Transparent Information Access
Jim Brown
Pacific Northwest Laboratory*
Battelle Boulevard
Richland, WA. 99352
(509)375-3626
jcbrown@pnl.gov
ABSTRACT
The information management needs of the Department of Energy (DOE) represents a fertile domain for the development of
highly sophisticated yet intuitive enterprise-wide computing solutions. These solutions must support business operations,
research agendas, technology development efforts, decision support, and other application areas with a user base ranging
from technical staff to the highest levels of management.
One area of primary interest is in the Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Branch of DOE. In this arena,
the issue of tracking and managing nuclear waste related to the long legacy of prior defense production and research
programs is one of high visibility and great concern. The Tank Waste Information Network System (TWINS) application
has been created by the Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) for the DOE to assist in managing and accessing the
information related to this mission.
The TWINS solution addresses many of the technical issues faced by other efforts to provide integrated information access
to a wide variety of stakeholders. TWINS provides secure transparent access to distributed heterogeneous multi-media
information sources from around the DOE complex. The users interact with the information through a consistent user
interface that presents the desired data in a common format regardless of the structure of the source information.
The solutions developed by the TWINS project represent an integration of several technologies and products that can be
applied to other mission areas within DOE and other government agencies. These solutions are now being applied to public
and private sector problem domains as well. The successful integration and inter-operation of both commercial and custom
modules into a flexible and extensible information architecture will help ensure that new problems facing DOE and other
clients can be addressed more rapidly in the future by re-use of existing tools and techniques proven viable through the
TWINS efforts.
Keywords: Environmental Data, Distributed, Heterogeneous, Graphical User Interface, Meta-data, Multi-media.1. INTRODUCTION
The United States Department of Energy (US-DOE)
is responsible for multiple installations distributed
throughout the United States. Many of these installations
contain waste products that, when released, would
negatively impact the environment. Some of the waste
sites are: 1) temporary, 2) unsafe, 3) leaking, 4) filled
with an undetermined amount and type of radionuclides,
and 5) in need of immediate attention. To address these
situations effectively, scientists and engineers require
timely access to information from multiple databases and
data storage systems across the DOE complex.Common problems facing the US-DOE in this and
other areas are similar to those facing most large
distributed information intensive institutions. Some of
these problems include: 1) excessive data reporting time,
2) multiple data types, 3) disparate report formats, 4)
high cost of data, 5) unknown or inconsistent data quality
indicators, 6) poor data traceability, and 7) uncontrolled
and unsynchronized data replication and duplication.
To address these problematic conditions, the Pacific
Northwest Laboratory (PNL) developed the Tank Waste
Information Network System (TWINS). The system
architecture developed for TWINS is applicable to other* Pacific Northwest Laboratory is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Battelle Memorial Institute under Contract DE-AC06-76RLO #1830.
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Brown, J. Enterprise wide transparent information access, article, May 1, 1995; Richland, Washington. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc794622/m1/3/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.