III MEF tests mobile phone application

Photo By Master Sgt. Rebekka Heite | Capt. Carrick T. Longley, right, instructs Marines and sailors during a three-day Marine Civil Information Management training class and working group on Camp Hansen Nov. 7-9. MarCIM’s goal is to provide structured data collection that enables civil reconnaissance and builds a civil information grid. Langley is a Naval Post Graduate School student and presenter for the training. The Marines and sailors are with III Marine Expeditionary Force Civil Affairs Detachment, III MEF Headquarters Group, III MEF, and 3rd Medical Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 35, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, III MEF.  

CAMP COURTNEY, OKINAWA, JAPAN

11.09.2011

Story by Sgt. Rebekka Heite 

III Marine Expeditionary Force   

CAMP COURTNEY, Japan - More than 30 Marines and sailors participated in a Marine civil information management training class and working group here Nov. 7-9.

The training included hands-on practice with smartphones and tablets loaded with MarCIM, military software on a smartphone or tablet used to collect civil and humanitarian information. The training also included Q-and-As and suggestions for improvements.

The III Marine Expeditionary Force is the test bed for MarCIM, said Scott Hourin, project analyst, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, Experimentation Center.

The Marines who participated in the training were part of III Marine Expeditionary Force Civil Affairs Detachment, III MEF Headquarters Group, III MEF. The sailors who participated were part of 3rd Medical Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 35, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, III MEF.

Before this program, information was handwritten and sat in the civil affairs Marine’s pocket, said Maj. Richard E. Graham. Now, with the electronic devices automatically uploading the reports, future Marines will have access to the information when developing their analysis for the command.

“(As the test bed for the program), the better we do the better for everyone,” said Gunnery Sgt. Larry J. Arnold, civil affairs operations and planning chief, III MEF Civil Affairs Det.

This will help build a database of lessons learned and past efforts. So when a real-world event – whether it be training, war, humanitarian assistance or disaster relief – happens the plan will be better, said Graham.

The utility is username- and password-protected and can be used on either Android or iOS platforms, said Capt. Carrick T. Longley, Naval Post Graduate School student and a presenter for the training.

A key benefit of MarCIM is that it can be downloaded onto any smartphone or tablet, which means that if one of the government-issued devices is rendered inoperable, a replacement can be bought almost instantly anywhere in the world instead of waiting months or even years to get it replaced, said Hourin.

MarCIM is currently in phase I, moving to phase II, of its implementation, Hourin explained during his class.

Phase I included gathering equipment and ensuring functionality. This began in August 2010 and is scheduled to conclude in December.

During phase I, MarCIM was used to provide information during Operation Tomodachi and the most recent Cobra Gold and Balikatan exercises, said Chris Breault, office manager, MARFORPAC, Experimentation Center, during the training.

“It makes the job easier,” said Staff Sgt. Kenny W. Padilla, civil affairs team chief, III MEF Civil Affairs Det. “The software works excellently and you are able to do the job without any type of Internet connection.”

An Internet connection, cell network or Wi-Fi, is not needed to input the information, only for upload.

With MarCIM, civil affairs Marines can collect information and enter it into the utility and save it. Then, when connected to the Internet, the utility automatically uploads their completed inputs to a secure password-protected website, said Breault.

Information collected includes population, number of hospitals and clinics, water sources and other useful information about the area.
Phase II is a limited technical assessment that will be conducted during Exercises Cobra Gold and Balikatan in 2012.

Phase III is scheduled for fiscal year 2013 and will be an operational assessment.

During the assessment, civil affairs Marines from all three MEFs will assess the application in different operational environments, including exercises and in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

The software programs operate with the utilities Lighthouse, ISAAC, Semantic Wiki and ORA. Lighthouse is a smartphone data collection application. ISAAC, which stands for international stability assessment and analysis capability, is a geo-spatial analysis application. Semantic Wiki is mostly text-based analysis, much like Wikipedia but with subject-matter expert-verified information. ORA, which stands for open reporting application, is for social networking analysis.

Currently all four applications, though each part of MarCIM, use separate, cloud-based databases, so information pulled from each application could be different, Hourin clarified. Cloud-based databases are Internet access storage with multiple redundancies, so if one hard drive fails there are backups.

The current plan is for each MEF to receive 12 devices; six smartphones and six tablets, said Breault. But that could all change depending on the feedback that the III MEF Civil Affairs Detatchment Marines provide, he said.

• Date Taken: 11.09.2011
• Date Posted: 11.22.2011 18:45
• Story ID: 80449
• Location: CAMP COURTNEY, OKINAWA, JP