Provided project management and integration services for Kirkwood Community College
MDB, Inc. was contracted by Kirkwood Community College (KCC) to provide issue expertise and project-management and integration skills to the Hazardous Response Training (HaRT) Innovation Project. The goal of the project is to construct an expert system with dynamic e-tools and semantic Web-search capabilities in order to standardize hazard-response case-study knowledge collection and retrieval. This would support the needs of chemical-emergency responders and skilled support personnel.
A primary task under the contract was the creation and administration of an Expert Advisory Committee, composed of members from around the country. The committee's geographic dispersal and time constraints necessitated a means by which members could communicate quickly and remotely. In response, MDB’s IT staff created a Web site with the following features:
- Straightforward navigation menu
- User-friendly design and functionality
- Multi-threaded blog
- Enhanced site searching
- Online document repository
- Recommended reading and related links
- Advisory Committee contact list
- Webcast of committee discussions and semantic Web technology demonstrations
The project team can post validated sources of related information for the committee to review. The site also allows the committee to respond to HaRT-related, time-sensitive questions posted by KCC or MDB. Panel members are notified, via e-mail, when such questions are posted and require feedback. The site’s collected responses allow committee members to read and react to comments from other members.
By using existing components, MDB provided a Web-based, database-driven solution in a timely and cost-effective manner. The blog has been a great asset for the HaRT Advisory Committee, and it has created an effective communication tool, changing dramatically the process for working with national experts from around the country.
