The Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and the National Security Innovation Network have partnered to administer a three-day challenge on predictive aircraft maintenance. Over 50 hackers from industry and academia gathered at the Into the Dataverse challenge to employ artificial intelligence in military aircraft maintenance, DoD said Monday.

The challenge took place at the University of Michigan’s School of Aeronautical Engineering. Participants exchanged ideas with DoD representatives to present AI systems that classify and measure maintenance activities, with respect to focus areas of data collection and user interface. A group of officials from government and academia served as judges to evaluate entries based on demonstration level, market viability, validation and potential impact.

“This hackathon brought together a diverse group of incredibly talented and innovative people who, in a very short time, developed and presented creative solutions to a challenging problem,” said Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, JAIC director, 2019 Wash100 Award winner and one of the judges.

Winners secured up to $15,000 in funds to continue development of their entries.

The Department of Energy has chosen a public-private partnership led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to manage a research and development facility that will focus on desalineation technology platforms. DOE said Monday that the National Alliance for Water Innovation will aim to address water security gaps and explore approaches to treat certain water sources for multiple applications via the Energy-Water Desalination Hub. 

Under the initiative, NAWI will build treatment systems for produced, brackish and sea-based waters in an effort to help water desalination system suppliers build critical components and large-scale platforms. The alliance also seeks to minimize the environmental impact for 90 percent of non-traditional water sources over the next decade.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the National Energy Technology Laboratory helped form NAWI, which has more than 35 members and 180 partner organizations. Congress has allocated $40 million for the hub since fiscal 2017 and DOE expects stakeholders to provide $34 million in cost-share funds.

The department added it plans to award research grants to solar desalination and wastewater resource recovery projects through the Water Security Grand Challenge.

The General Services Administration has asked nine contractors for advice on how to offer software-defined wide-area network services to agencies through the $50B Enterprise Infrastructure Services telecommunications contract, FCW reported Monday.

“SD-WAN services are being requested and proposed under EIS using existing contract services such as Managed Network Services, Transport Services and Service-Related Equipment,” a spokesperson for GSA told the publication in a statement Friday.

The spokesperson added that the EIS team has sought and received feedback from all prime contractors and a subcontractor with regard to the SD-WAN broadband services and is in the process of reviewing the comments.

Jim Russo, telecommunications manager for EIS solutions development at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, sent a letter to EIS suppliers to ask specific questions about SD-WAN, including standard pricing models for the capabilities and the services’ effect on overall client spending compared with conventional WAN services.

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA, said the space agency plans to build a space-based telescope to identify and track near-Earth objects that could pose potential threats to the planet, GeekWire reported Monday. Zurbuchen said at a meeting of NASA’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee Monday the proposed infrared telescope for the NEO Surveillance Mission will use the technologies created for the NEOCam telescope.

He noted that the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will play a key role in the development of the NEO Surveillance Mission, which will function as a planetary defense mission. The proposed telescope is expected to take off by 2025 to detect 65 percent of 140-meter-wide near-Earth asteroids within five years following the launch, according to the report.

Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, said the service branch is in the process of assessing plans that were submitted in response to a solicitation for the second phase of the National Security Space Launch program, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Thompson said the vendors competing for NSSL phase 2 have proposed rockets with “viable technologies” and are “on track to meet our requirements.”

Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin are the four companies vying for a program to launch national security payloads through 2027. The service branch plans to select two launch service providers by mid-June.

Thompson stated that the military branch is examining the use of reusable rocket boosters. “So reusabilility is just one way to change the return-on-investment for the vendor and be able to price a little bit differently in a competition,” he said.

Deloitte announced on Monday that the company has launched Smart Factory Fabric, a pre-configured suite of cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications powered by Amazon Web Services, to accelerate smart factory transformations for companies with manufacturing operations.

The Smart Factory Fabric suite of services helps companies improve their operational performance and reduce costs by increasing visibility, optimizing production, improving quality, and minimizing unplanned downtime associated with running a smart factory.

Smart Factory Fabric is designed for companies with manufacturing operations; sample industry sectors include: aerospace and defense; industrial products; pharmaceutical and medical devices; automotive; government; high tech; oil, gas and chemicals; and power and utilities. 

“For companies with complex manufacturing operations, implementing a smart factory solution at industrial scale can be daunting, but imperative for those who wish to remain competitive today. That’s why we’ve worked with AWS on a smart factory offering,” said Andy Daecher, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Deloitte Digital IoT U.S. practice lead. “Smart Factory Fabric pairs Deloitte’s experience in business strategy, operations, industrial products, and technology engineering with AWS cloud and IoT services, including its global reach, to deliver a scalable, configurable smart factory that’s tailored to a manufacturer’s unique needs.”

About Deloitte

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