First Class Cadets Alex Murdoch, Michelle McGill, Alec Groff, and Tara Strauss pose for a photo before giving their presentation at the 2018 Service Academy Student Mathematics Conference held at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., April 12, 2018.
Their project is Data Analysis of Cutter Unstructured Operational Summaries.
U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Lauren Laughlin
Operational Summaries (OPSUMs) are daily reports completed and transmitted by every underway cutter in the Coast Guard to their respective operational command. OPSUMs are mission summaries that contain a vast amount of unstructured data. The Office of Requirements and Analysis (CG-771) desires to extract data from OPSUMs for analysis. The raw unstructured data from the OPSUMs must be put into a structured format. First, effective code is written to extract and structure the Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star OPSUM data for fiscal years 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Second, relevant analysis is conducted on the structured data. From the OPSUM data, engineering casualties, communications system status, and fuel usage will be analyzed. Third, testing is done to verify code flexibility to other Coast Guard platforms and mission summaries.
Advisor: Dr. Katherine Krystinik, Lt. Cmdr. Jonathan Harris, and Capt. Melinda McGurer, Coast Guard Academy Department of Mathematics