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Spaun (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network)

 

The SPA Unified Network (Spaun) model demonstrates how a wide variety of cognitive and non-cognitive tasks can be integrated in a single large-scale, spiking neuron model. Spaun switches tasks and provides all responses without any manual change in parameters from a programmer. Essentially, it is a fixed model that integrates perception, cognition, and action across several different tasks.

Impressive work! The singularity must be near…  although it is not quite as fast as the brain yet: According to the website of the project, it takes about 2.5h of computer time for one second of simulation. Nengo, the software used to implement the brain model, is open source and is available here.

HAZUS-MASAS

HAZUS-MASAS is not a magic incantation used by GIS wizards, just the name of an interesting project I was involved with (on the data engineering side of things) when I worked at Galdos Systems, back in Vancouver. I just saw CEO Ron Lake has written an article about it on the company’s blog. In short, the goal of the project was to enable the distribution of HAZUS files (created with a FEMA-provided ArcGIS plugin for the estimation of potential losses from natural disasters, like earthquakes or floods) through the Canadian Multi-Agency Situational Awareness System (MASAS), used by emergency managers. Some of the UI was done with the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex (screenshot above): In the backend, it connected with INdicio (a CSW-ebRIM implementation), which provided metadata about indicators extracted from HAZUS files, as well as the contents of the indicators themselves, stored as KML documents.

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