Northern Arizona University is leading an $8 million national collaborative project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense intended to increase the security of global supply chains and infrastructure.
The project is intended to expand on work that started with the FEWSION project, a large supply-chain data monitoring effort at the Flagstaff university that launched in 2016 with a grant from the National Science Foundation. That project came up with a supply chain visualization tool, called FEW-View, that has since been used to provide information in situations that have included natural disasters, the war in Ukraine, the Western water crisis and more.
Those applications drew the attention of national security players, who are tasking the team to develop what is called the Supply Chain Critical Infrastructure Risk Management Platform, or SCRIMP. It will use open-source intelligence data science technology to map and forecast global supply chains.
The FEWSION project was founded by Benjamin Ruddell, a professor at NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems, who is also the lead in the SCRIMP effort, along with Assistant Research Professor Richard Rushforth and FEWSION Program Director Lisa Whelan.
“The Covid-19 pandemic and associated supply chain crises, critical minerals shortage, war in Ukraine and onshoring movement underscore the importance of supply chains for U.S. national security,” Ruddell said in a statement. “We need secure and resilient supply chains, and better information is a key step toward taking the necessary action.”
One of the updates that the new project will bring to the earlier technology is a jump from using high-resolution, real-time information in place of annually updated material. Rushforth said this will help with planning for risks.
“Because of this we’ll have to reimagine how we visualize and interact with our data to facilitate informed decision-making,” he said in a statement.
The $8 million grant funds the project for a year, and was secured with the help of U.S. Sen Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, who emphasized the need for the technology in light of events of the past few years.
“The pandemic and ongoing global conflicts have highlighted the vulnerability of our supply chains, which is why I’ve advocated for advanced technology to deepen understanding and ability to leverage these networks,” Kelly said in a statement. “I was glad to help deliver the critical funding for this NAU-led project, and I’ll continue working in the Senate to support special operations and further innovations that will strengthen our national security.”
