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Virtual Command Center (VCC) for Disaster Recovery: Infosim® and its project partners celebrate their victory of the TM Forum Catalyst Award

July 12th 2024, Würzburg
An internal interview conducted by Melanie Weber (Marketing Projects & Content Creation Manager @ Infosim®) with Dr. David Hock (Director of Research @ Infosim®).
And the winner is….

A few days ago, at the TM Forum Digital Transformation World in Copenhagen, the Catalyst “Autonomous Network Hyperloops – Phase V” was honored with the award “Outstanding Catalyst – Beyond Telco”. In this project, Infosim® contributed to the development of a Virtual Command Center (VCC) for disaster management together with our project partners Verizon, MTN, Orange, NTT, Intersec, Cognizant, Antel, Celfocus, Chunghwa Telecom, ESRI, Futurewei, TIM and UBiqube.

In the following blog post, Dr. David Hock, Director of Research at Infosim®, gives you an insight into the content and implementation of the Catalyst project and why the topic of disaster recovery is more important than ever.

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Melanie Weber
Hello David, first of all, congratulations on the successful Catalyst! Can you please describe what the project was about and why the topic of disaster recovery is so relevant?

Thank you very much, we are also very pleased and extremely proud of the award!

How devastating environmental disasters such as forest fires, tornadoes, storms and floods can be for people and infrastructure is something we have unfortunately seen more and more frequently this year and in recent years.

However, these disasters also underline the enormous importance of robust early warning and control systems in order to be able to optimally coordinate rescue and emergency services in the event of a disaster and to minimize the extent and damage as far as possible.

In the Catalyst project, we have developed a Virtual Command Center (VCC) as a Service and showcased its application for disaster and crisis management together with our project partners.

The aim of this VCC is to provide the authorities involved with a central administration point that provides them with data they need in an emergency in order to make the right decisions, distribute resources sensibly and limit the extent of the disaster.

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Dr. David Hock
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Melanie Weber
That sounds like an incredibly impactful project, and it’s wonderful to hear about the recognition you’ve received for your efforts!

I’m particularly interested in understanding more about the technical aspects of the Catalyst project. Could you please elaborate on how this project was technically realized?

The implementation of the project was based on the needs of a VCC, as it must be a robust virtual environment that provides the most important data for monitoring and managing critical infrastructures and resources in real time.

In the end, the Virtual Command Center is a combination of the various solutions and systems of all project partners.

AI and ML were used to enable predictive analytics and forecasting. In addition, digital twins were used for virtual simulation, GEO information systems for data visualization and automation to trigger reconfiguration in the network. Inventory, chatbots, fault and performance management and much more were used to provide a 360-degree view and monitoring of the network.

The end result of the “Virtual Command Center as a Service” is therefore a colorful portfolio of solutions that are all integrated with each other but run individually in the cloud.

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Dr. David Hock
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Melanie Weber
I can imagine how large the project team is! And what did Infosim® contribute to the solution?

Our automated network and service management solution StableNet® formed the central system in the Catalyst, on which all the network information converged.

This means that we consolidated the data from the other systems via various interfaces so that we could map a complete image of the entire network and then transfer the data to the systems of the other partners.

Through this network overview, we created a holistic inventory and were able to focus on performance management and optimization through the monitoring and live information.

StableNet®‘s Service Assurance Dashboards were used to display general performance information as well as logical 3D topology views to monitor, visualize and analyze service conditions.

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Dr. David Hock
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Melanie Weber
Is such a Virtual Command Center (VCC) only used in the event of crises and disasters?

A Virtual Command Center generally offers a comprehensive control center for monitoring a critical infrastructure.

The application areas for which such a command center can be used depend on the user group. These can be telecommunications companies, public institutions, cities, countries or, for example, operators of power plants or large facilities.

The specific use case of disaster recovery demonstrates the extent and necessity of such a solution. It shows how important continuous monitoring, automated fault management, optimal capacity planning and comprehensive analysis and correlation options for predicting events are in order to improve decision-making in the event of an emergency.

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Dr. David Hock
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Melanie Weber
It’s impressive to see how versatile and essential such a system can be!

I noticed that the Catalyst is currently in ‘Phase V.’ Could you elaborate on what this means?”

Each Catalyst phase is basically a thematic continuation of the project. Our Catalyst ran in “Phase V”, which stands for the 5th iteration or continuation of this project.

The core around Autonomous Network Hyperloops remained the same throughout the phases and was only extended by other aspects or the topic was looked at from other angles.

Infosim® has been taking part since the 4th phase, in which the focus was on metaverse and VR, which was also quite successful. But we did not want to stop at this point and started another phase to focus on a Virtual Command Center.

What makes this phase special is that we had set ourselves the goal of going beyond a proof of concept to develop a minimum viable product (MVP). The fact that we achieved this makes me particularly proud!

In this project, as well as in the past projects in which we have participated, I am always impressed by how well-suited TM Forum Catalysts are to show how quickly tangible solutions can be generated by integrating various good products with each other in a meaningful way.

At this point, I would also like to thank all our partners once again for their excellent cooperation. Such success is only possible through outstanding teamwork!

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Dr. David Hock
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Melanie Weber
Are there plans to market the VCC in the future and will Infosim® take part in another Catalyst next year?

At the end of the fifth phase, we have developed a finished MVP that can be implemented at a client’s premises. We are still discussing how to proceed with the commercialization of this solution and have not yet decided.

Infosim® has already been participating regularly and successfully in Catalyst projects for eight years now and we hope to be able to actively participate in a project again next year.

What is certain, however, is that we will be attending the TM Forum Accelerate in Lisbon in February next year and hope to meet project partners there to discuss new Catalyst projects.

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Dr. David Hock
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Melanie Weber
Thanks for your time David. I look forward to the next Catalyst projects!

Anytime with pleasure, thank you!

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Dr. David Hock

Further information on this topic:

Dr. David Hock

Director of Research @ Infosim® GmbH & Co. KG

David is coordinating the research activities at Infosim®, where he is working on several national and international research projects with a main scope being on the Future of Automated Network & Service Management. Additionally, he is also coordinating the cooperation with leading academic institutions and relevant industry partners. Prior to working at Infosim®, David was working as a research assistant and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Würzburg where he graduated with a Dr. rer. nat. degree in computer science.
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