 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. It is noon on Thursday, folks. Ted Rawson here in our downtown Honolulu studios, our show, Where the Drone Leads on Think Tech, Where the Drone Leads, kind of a really interesting and complex subject these days. Normally we have on the table here an example of the drone technology because people focus in so much on the visible flying part or even the ground controller part, the technical things. But we're going to talk about something that's not on the table today. You can't see it. That's the invisible part and that's the whole socio-economic, socio-political evolution of how drones have to be considered and thought of by agencies, by operators, by police departments and such, by schools, by educators. And particularly important at this point in time because we're all, all the states are heading into the 2018 legislative session and it's not unlikely that there'll be a lot of legislation showing up and policy creation showing up that associate with this. So the more we can be informed about how people make decisions on these complex subjects, the better off we are. And we have to help us through that. A gentleman who's been on this show a few times before. I'll introduce him in a minute but let me just tell you he's very withdrawn, very light in the expression. So we have to chum the water a lot and prime the pump to get information out of him. How it is. We deal with that kind of people. So anyway, welcoming on board again Dr. Mike Brown of One World, One Way and also of Capella University, a new assignment for Mike. And Mike welcome on board again and please tell us how things are going. I appreciate that, uncle. It's good to see you. Yeah, I am rather shy, aren't I? Yeah, right. Yeah. That was a joke, folks. Look, I appreciate that. Yeah, I just joined Capella University, an institution that's very near dear to me. You and I were talking earlier about your institution and how they respect applied research. And Capella University, an institution I've been fortunate enough to be able to be brought onto at Corpapathy, that is a great level of applied research. And that's a little bit about what we're going to talk about, of course, today, because that type of research that's going to set the foundation for what Congress is going to be doing in a couple of months. And that's looking at how to integrate the unmanned aircraft vehicles in its system within NASA. And so with having said that, everything goes back to policy. And so we're looking at, of course, today, we're looking at the social political ramifications and issues having to do with this technology. I think a lot of times people forget technology on harness can be a problem, as well as being a convenience. Unfortunately, I'd like to render my condolences to those persons in Las Vegas, where technology showed its ugly face. And so we all have to work together on that. But I think that the piece that's most interesting in our prior interactions is how the organization, so many of them are on the country. We've got NFPA, we've got the IAEM, we've got the various RL1 Applied Research Lab at University of Hawaii, and then multiple agencies in between, including the FAA, the FCC, DHS and such. And all of them are evolving policy and strategy in perhaps a little different orientation, different perception, different agenda. And yet they all have to sort of march together to the same congressional calendar and the same state legislative calendar. So, Mike, in your game of trying to identify how these vectors can be aligned, what ideas have you got about how we could do something to help make this more rational for this year's legislative session? I think you said the key word, rational. Okay. You throw Congress out there, you throw rational. It don't always work, does it? However, there is a good side of every ANSI. You've got ANSI out there looking at metrics and standards. You've got all these organizations. You've got the private industry saying, hey, I need you to do this because I can benefit from it economically. You've got the other trade groups out there. You've got the private sector, everything from archeologists to farmers to real estate to even power utility companies. You and I talked about how the different platforms that these wonderful machines can use in order to exploit commerce and also help strengthen our community. But you've got all of these different organizations, either Vine for either of their own parochial needs and there seems to be no throughput. Who is, will it be the FAA who have been entrusted to kind of guide this? And they've done what I consider to be a very good job up until now, providing certain standards. But there's something interesting going on here and I kind of love it. What's happening here is ultimately all of this is an experiment for developing a process for policy. And the simplest way of doing policy is the input output model. That's very simple. Of course, it really works well when the input and output model, it's understood the black box that's at the end, which has always been the problem. It's really good if whatever comes out of that black box is rational. And I put to you that with all of these organizations, even our buddies in Virginia, they're working on that regional idea with drones and all the other groups that we've talked about when you look at them. At the end of the day, they are going to provide a plethora of information, both quantitative and qualitative, the seven test sites, that will be able to be used by the official actors, Congress. And this is where they've done it right. I put to you that we are watching for the first time rational behavior because they haven't rushed the process. We can look at our circumstances today right now in our environment, in the legislative environment, which is where this is going to end up. And see where if you don't have all of the unofficial actors bringing in the input you need that you have lopsided policy that may not work for the better good. I put to you that because Congress has taken its time and allowed the FAA to allow organizations like yours, like some of the other institutions, like George and his buddies, out there at the flight line. That's George Purdy on Lanai, by the way. Shout out always to our George Purdy. The thing is allowing everyone to exercise this time to gather the data and the information so that they can provide it for Congress to make a decision will inevitably strengthen the possibility of having a more cost-effective and cost-benefit decision and it also provides for transparency because all of these organizations are not acting inside those. How many times have we reached out to organizations and they've said, hey, can you help me? Oh, I've got this. The question is there's not a repository right now and who is going to be the throughput in order to get at the Congress and say, here's what we've got, go with it. You know, you just said something, you said a lot of things. And by the way, on this show, we've had George Purdy on many times. In fact, two weeks ago he was on. We have found it necessary to limit George to three bright ideas per half-hour show because that's about all we can take. So I think we're going to have to impose the same limit on you, Mike. But if I go back to a minute to the picture you created, you talked about a process model. Input, a processor of some kind and a box that has something in it and then it has outputs, which if I can reinterpret those outputs, they could be defined by the desired outcomes. That is when an agency or a group does something and thinks about how it's going to spend its resources, it really needs to think of what the outcome wants to be. And that outcome should be the product of that process in that box. The input is what's going into it, which may be incomplete and it may be wrong. There's a lot of factors that could influence that processing box in the middle. But that processing box is like a control circuit of some kind that is the output isn't going to happen all at once. It's going to happen a piece at a time and the output gets checked against the input to see if the output and the input were related in any way or does the input have to be changed based on the output and then the process, depending how good or how simple it is, can adjust to those changing circumstances and changing needs. That's a really interesting connection that you may have made for us here, sir. That is the connection between engineering and computer simulation and modeling and simulation and that form of mathematical-based insight and a social process or a technical process. What is ANSI looking for? They're looking for a tangible way of putting, of developing measurements and standards. So that would be their output. So there's not much play. The most important thing is being given enough time in order to work that out in Congress has. Remember, they were supposed to have this out in October of last year, but here we are today, October of a year later. They're giving enough time to allow that input-output model to work, not only for ANSI, but for National Fire Protection Association, which is moving forward with their standards. So time is very important in allowing us, but it hasn't stopped UABs from being able to operate, operate doing disasters, operate doing assessments for crops. So the wheel still turns. Now, that's the tangible part of it. However, at some point, all of the information that's being gathered is going to also be placed through Congress. When it gets to Congress, it's now starting to go into their black box. The argument from the pundits has been that, well, we don't know how they're making their decisions. My position is that because this has been a very open and transparent process with academia being involved, with states and local governments being involved, with other individuals being invited to provide their information like to the National Council, you and I were talking about, for public safety, that we don't have to worry about the process for the black box because all of the information that's being used in there is known by all of us. What's coming out of there now? Congress has a chance now with all of the information to make it informed. This is what rational theory is based on. They have now a chance to make rational judgments and policy because they have all of the unofficial actors that provided their information for input. They've got all of this weather and data information. Nothing is hidden, and now they can sit back and say, well, this is what we need to do, and they can make a more informed decision. So on one level, the input output is from organizations like ours, Capella University is doing research, your institution is doing research, the National Fire Protection Association, all that information gets put into our decision makers. And now, for the first time, they can take the time to have hundreds of data and information to make a cost-and-benefit decision that helps us going forward with this new technology. What happens when you rush a process where we can look at the Affordable Care Act and that? What happens when you try to rush something through? It doesn't have a lot of the unofficial actors working on it. You have failed policy. So I give Congress, they've done an outstanding job allowing us as unofficial actors to provide them enough information going forward. This is wonderful. It makes me get it. Okay, this is getting exciting, Mike. We got about one minute to our first break here, in fact, our only break. I think when you were on the show last time, we probably had three sections and 45 minutes of two breaks. So we'll get you a moment to think here. But we'll pick up this idea of how that process box would be formed. What goes through my mind is we want to make it really simple. I'd like to see everybody who's involved have a piece of paper. Here's an arrow coming in on the left says, here's the input, and a couple of arrows coming out on the right saying, here's what your desired outcome is, and this box. And then in that box is some code of some kind, some expression of how decisions are made and how balances are constructed and such. But if we write that up in Microsoft Word, it's going to be a zillion pages nobody will read. If we do it in PowerPoint, it'll be a zillion charts which nobody will read. So we have to figure out some way to express what that processing box is. I'll give you my analogy. It's really simple. A cat. You probably have a cat. We all had cats. They sit and they see a bird. They decide, okay, I'm going to go get that bird. It's the bird is, say, 10 feet away. The cat moves two feet closer. The cat switches its tail in some way and slinks down in the grass. It computes the trajectory it needs and the power it needs and how it's going to get that bird, and it knows how to do it. But we never taught it calculus. We never showed it any practices. We never ran through simulations. The cat somehow innately knows how to do that. Its input is, I see bird, I want to have lunch. Its output is a bird on the plate, fricasseed and opened up for lunch. The process in the middle is how the cat computes all that. So we've got to figure out how that cat thinks. After a break, okay, we'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. For every Game Day, a sign a designated driver. I'm Ethan Allen, host of a likeable science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for a likeable science, where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great, it's all entertaining, it's all educational, so I hope you'll join me for a likeable science. We are back folks, the second half of our show where the drone leads. Thursday afternoon, Ted Ralston downtown Honolulu. We have Dr. Mike Brown standing by in Stambridge, Georgia. Mike, Dr. Mike of many affiliations. We'll say maybe Air Force, deep in the past there somewhere, intelligence along the way, assisting the medical profession, being assisted by the medical profession. One-world-one-way, a fantastic 501, dealing with common problems that we all are dealing with, and then of course, lately, Capella University. So Mike, you've had a long and storied record here of complex solutions, complex problem address, getting more complex all the time, and now you're able to practice that art at Capella University. So what we were talking about just before the break is how do we take a set of individual processes and stack them so that they're a thousand deep and represent the various thousand of agencies, including the states, legislatures, the Congress, and this sort of thing that might have an interest in where this whole drone element is going. How do we, do you think you take that on inside Capella? Or how do you think Capella and UH could do something together in terms of the social decision-making process in complex environments? One of the things to learn when I was at Capella University is to keep it a secret. You were doing an apology about the cat. I put to you that I disagree. I don't need to know how the cat does what it does with calculating its trajectory in order to meet its outcome. Just as I don't need to know how the National Fire Protection Association and its committees are going to come up with the standards that they're going to use. What I need to know is how many individual organizations, institutions, and all are contributing to the process because I have to at some point trust that they're all doing what they're doing in good faith. So how the cat gets the bird is not as important. Getting the bird is what's important. So looking for what they have to put on the table at the end of the day and providing all of the standards and all of the input that they have is what we need. The issue is who takes all of that information and puts it in such a way that the end user, that being the legislators, will be able to use that information in the most efficient and effective way. That keeps it simple. It keeps it simple, keeps it streamlined, and also provides it as being transparent. Collaboration, communication, all of those are hallmarks of the emergency management profession. What we're talking about now and what's important from a social and political standpoint is how we use that technology, not today, but what impact is it going to have in 10 or 15 years? Give you an example. Everybody can see the beauty of this technology and the advantages. What I'm concerned about are the things that they're going to bring that create an asymmetrical threat to our very existence and our ability to try to become more resilient. For example, using an automatic weapon is a terrible thing. Drones and UAVs can be used in the various ways as well. Thinking of innovation in this particular case. Uncle, is it possible that we need to look now with ANSI about increasing the payloads in the size of UAVs with manufacturers now going forward and looking for mitigation? Should we be looking at increasing those drones in the size of the commercial drones because they can carry fuel in generators to locations that are not accessible to them, such as what they're experiencing now in Puerto Rico? Can we use these machines in those ways to access areas that hadn't been used before, carrying diesel fuel to areas and landing them in locations and having representatives that will be able to use these because we can't access them. Can ANSI now look at that with applied research going forward while we have this platform right front and center of Congress? These are the things that we need to be looking at. That's cool. That goes back to our discussion about what the desired outcomes are from an organization's efforts, such as ANSI. Let me go back to the cat for a minute. I didn't mean to imply that we have to understand that the cat computes all that. We don't care. The cat does it. The cat has a process called cat and it's called survival as a cat. That's what it does. How do we express... Take ANSI as an example. ANSI is a process as well. It's an input coming into it which is all the people who provide information. It's got some kind of output. We don't know quite what it is other than they want some form of identification of standards. Exactly why ANSI wants those standards. They're not going to be defining FAA certification policy and such. They're simply performing a service. Nevertheless, there's standards that come up. There's a cat function within ANSI that somehow assimilates all those standards and puts them together in one. What you, I think, implied would be that maybe there's an order factor here. The highest order utility maybe should define where the principal desired outcomes be. For example, I would say that broadcast media, video media, this sort of thing, journalism is interesting but not in a critical function. What's more critical is the emergency operations aspects. If we could think of the groups that deal with emergency management and emergency operations operations again, not theory, but operations, and have them define what the desired outcomes are, those outcomes, you just outline them. Gas, take generators, take prescription medicines, this sort of thing to disadvantage the locations. Those might be the highest order values that commerce should strive to feed and then there's a progressively lower level of things to strive for but we can have some order to it if we started from where the most value will occur. Well take your expertise. I know nobody that has stronger expertise than you, particularly with platforms such as LiDAR and some of the other communication systems. Is it feasible that we could develop regions in districts where we have drones during national disasters that can provide the communications for Verizon and for Sprint and for these in doing times of emergencies? Absolutely. I mean drones as a radio relay, as a cell phone as a radio relay. Why would we if an island or a location loses its communications applied research says look into providing drones which you and I know can stay above board for a very long time in certain quadrants, geological, geographical areas and they can be launched and actually providing a continuation, a continuity of operations for a environment or for the whole community through these private investors which they can also invest in this with the government as a partner and they can continue to provide the communications for the prep. Those are the types of innovations that we need to look for going forward in order to meet what I would tell my students the national preparedness system under the emergency frameworks these are the types of things that I want you to think about. How can we give to the whole community ensure resilience and sustainability of that community using applied research? Or what are the ways we can do that? Well can we keep drones above ground for what, a month at a time? We know that we can do that with certain drones depending on how they're built and they can carry radio equipment and these are not the technology. You just said something really magic Mike and wanted to talk about this it's the future and the kids are the future. They're going to be in the future they're going to be running in the future. All we can do is get them in the direction and open the door to but that's their future. So the issue of education and taking these kind of problems at this box level where you have the inputs, the outputs and we have the cap process in the middle and have the students take that on. How would they think about that from a emergency management perspective and how would we take that and rank it against the other potential users, take journalism on the one end, take education take the subsets of emergency management, firefighting law enforcement, environmental protections in there too, agriculture how do we take that and make a student project out of that and how do I, tell us a little bit about your work at the school and how do I become a student of yours in the school. Three questions in the last two minutes. I would love to have you one and you know I told you with open arms you've got all it takes to go. You're curious you're intelligent you're honorable and I like it. Am I not too old? Am I not too old? You're welcome to Capella University. What I wanted to say was there are some other there are some other factors that come into play here. One the privacy we're talking about drones we're talking about public safety, we're talking about emergency management but there's always going to be an issue with privacy there's going to be an issue with um the who is going to be in charge of this new technology when we start to use it for rescue and drone. Once again they have drones now that you can send in and actually pull out some of our hot shots. Once again shouldn't we ask the kids to think about that problem? We should ask the kids to think about that problem. They're the ones who are going to have to define those rules and manage that process. It's a great thought to put instead of telling what our rules are for privacy management let them figure it out. How would that be? I'll be one of your students. The show that you're doing now Ted is one of the ways that they can get it because they love social media. I know that two of my wife's young employees now are watching this show and our two of our son one's a graduate from Rutgers University working for Lockheed Martin as you know Cedric and the other one is in IT as well and they will look at this and this is how we are able to touch those lives and eventually I'm hoping to have maybe a student everything starts with a problem there's a gap in the research there's a problem and when they come to you and they say there's a problem then you say well how are you going to address that problem? What is the question that you want to answer? So they're going to answer well the problem is this so once they come and bring that problem then you best believe that I will start saying well you know give me how will you ask that because how they design that question to answer some of the things that we're talking about will determine how they're going to research that problem their methodology that's how we do it Let's work together on that and I like your promo of the show it's exactly what it's all about is to bring this kind of information forward in whatever form it might be understood and let's have you on again I'd like to be one of your students in this domain and at this point we have reached the mandatory 30-minute cutoff so Michael you do have an off switch and the station is going to shut us off whether we like it or not so anyway Michael hey Mike Brown thanks so much for coming on again and folks we'll see you next Thursday