Blueprint: VITA

Description

VITA is an Eden application for storage, manipulation and communication of person-related information.

The acronym VITA is derived from Victim Identification, Tracking and Tracing Application, although VITA is meant to cover person tracking and tracing in a more general sense.

Components:

• VITA Core
• PR - Person Registry
• PF - Person Finder Application (formerly Missing Persons Registry)
• DVI - Application for Management of Dead Bodies and Disaster Victim Identification

Requirements

Use-Cases

Anybody

• Report a fatality/find of a body
• See a list of missing persons
• Report sightings of missing persons

The victim

• Notify family members/friends about his/her whereabouts (and status)
• Notify family members/friends about contact opportunities

Relatives/friends of the victim

• Find out the whereabouts/contact opportunities of a family member/friend
• Report a family member/friend missing
• Report a family member/friend found
• Get notified when a missing family member/friend gets found

Hospital Staff

• Check-in a patient
• Check-out a patient
• See a list of current/former patients
• Find out whether a patient is reported missing
• Find out contact details of relatives/friends of a person
• Register a fatality
• Submit a body collection request

Shelter Staff

• Check-in a person
• Check-out a person
• See a list of current/former occupants
• Find out whether a person is reported missing
• Find out contact details of relatives/friends of a person
• Register a fatality
• Submit a body collection request

Help Desk / Call center

• Enter any reports/notifications/request on behalf of someone else
• Retrieve information about whereabouts/contact opportunities on missing persons on behalf of someone else

Body Recovery Team

• Get notified about bodies to be recovered/collected
• See a list of unrecovered/uncollected bodies in their area
• See a map of unrecovered/uncollected bodies in their area
• Manage/schedule recovery/collection requests
• Confirm (report) the recovery/collection of a body (or the impossibility of recovery/collection)

Person Search Team

• Get a list of missing persons
• Find out details for a missing person (missing reports, reported check-ins/check-outs/sightings, personal details, contact information, physical description)
• Find out contact details of family members/friends
• Find out contact details of reporters
• Enter details for a missing person (including photographs)
• Confirm reports of sightings
• Report a person found

Morgue Staff

• Register a dead body
• Register personal effects recovered/collected together with a body (including photographs)
• Report physical details of a dead body (including photographs)
• Report on storage/transfer of a body
• Report on release/disposal of a body
• Report storage/transfer/release/disposal of personal effects items

Death Investigator

• See a list of registered dead bodies
• Compare details of a dead body with missing persons and find candidate matches
• Establish the identity of a dead body
• Find out contact details of relatives/friends
• Confirm the identity of a dead body (declare a person deceased)

Interoperability

• VITA implements the ​PFIF format for the exchange of Missing Person data.

Design

Registries

All data sets describing the same instance of a person entity form a file.

All files for an entity type are accessible through a central registry.

The registry implements the following:

• dereferencing of URI's
• CRUD access brokerage for file contents
• file-access auditing
• classification of files
• administration of file status
• administration of access permission to a file as a whole
• permanent removal of a file as a whole
• a directory of all available record types in a file
• coverage statistics of files
• export of a file as a whole
• import of a file as a whole
• merging of files

Auditing

VITA implementations must be able to log all successful attempts to access and/or manipulate data in a file, even if the application does not require auditing. All logs, regardless of their actual granularity, must be available as a function of the file.

Data which will naturally change over time (e.g. the location of a person) must additionally be version-tracked in such way that they can be reconstructed for any point or interval of time.

Data which only change upon administrative measures (e.g. names) do not need to be version-tracked.

Data Model

Overview

This diagram is not complete and just meant to illustrate the general data structure.

Background

VITA defines four axes (aspects) for the construction of any "Personal Data":

• Entity - the entity type the data set relates to
• Distinction - assigned features for operational distinction
• Finding - features to be communicated by the data set
• Evidence - to describe the quality of the data

Any compliant set of personal data implements at least one feature for each axis.

• ​OWL Source (​Class Tree)

Entity

The entity axis determines the entity type to which the data set relates (=ownership), which can be types of:

• Individual
• Group
• Body
• Personal Effects
• Relationship

Distinction

The distinction axis describes any features which are used to distinguish particular person entities.

It is important to understand that distinction features in the VITA context are always assigned features, i.e. not naturally given - they cannot be observed but have to be communicated. The most commonly used distinction feature for person entities are names.

Distinction features may be ambiguous, even within the same domain (e.g. database). However, it is desirable to assign at least one unique feature in order to identify person entities. Such unique features are called Identity (ID).

Identities don't have to be unique across multiple domains. In case they are not, any communications of identities have to enclose a reference to the domain which administrates the particular identity (administrative domain).

Findings

Findings are all other features of the person entity which are to be communicated in this data set. These features can be assigned, observed or derived.

In the VITA context, photographs or other images are findings, not evidence.

Evidence

Evidence is any suitable means to describe the quality of data of the findings.

This always includes at least information on origin and time of the particular finding, but can also include references and links to sources, or information on methods of determination.

Examples

The person has red hair.

is incomplete - it contains the "Entity" (=the person) and a "Finding" (=has red hair), but no operational distinction and no evidence information.

Missing person, given name: Michael, family name: M., eye color: blue

is also incomplete - it contains the "Entity" (=person), "Distinction" (=given name and family name) and two "Findings" (=is missing, eye color), but no evidence information.

Note, that a "missing person" is not a person entity in the VITA context, but an entity (=person) plus a finding (=is missing). Implementations must handle this explicitly and consistently - e.g., a "missing person" as entity can never have the status "found", because this is a contradiction.

<pfif:person>
    <pfif:person_record_id>salesforce.com/a0030000001TRYR</pfif:person_record_id>
    <pfif:entry_date>2005-09-03T09:21:12.321Z</pfif:entry_date>
    <pfif:author_name>Bill Mandil</pfif:author_name>
    <pfif:author_email>bmd67893@example.com</pfif:author_email>
    <pfif:source_name>salesforce.com</pfif:source_name>
    <pfif:source_date>2005-09-03T09:21:12Z</pfif:source_date>
    <pfif:source_url>http://www.salesforce.com/person/a0030000001TRYR</pfif:source_url>
    <pfif:first_name>Katherine</pfif:first_name>
    <pfif:last_name>Doe</pfif:last_name>
    <pfif:sex>female</pfif:sex>
    <pfif:date_of_birth>1971-02</pfif:date_of_birth>
    <pfif:age>30-45</pfif:age>
    <pfif:photo_url>http://flickr.com/photo/12345678.jpg</pfif:photo_url>
  </pfif:person>

is a compliant set - it contains the "Entity" (pfif:person), "Distinction" (pfif:person_record_id, pfif:first_name, pfif:last_name), several "Findings" (pfif:sex, pfif:date_of_birth, pfif:age, pfif:photo_url) and plenty of "Evidence" (pfif:author_name, pfif:source_name, etc.).

Undefined values

Some (atomic) features in personal data sets are not applicable to all instances of the set (e.g. "Occupation" not applicable for infants), thus undefined values can be ambiguous here. For disambiguation, VITA implementations handle undefined values always as "not available", whereas "not applicable" must be defined explicitly and must not be the default value.

Roles

Any person entity can be assigned to roles, which qualify the entity for inclusion into certain processes. One and the same instance of the entity can be assigned to multiple roles at the same time.

Within a role, the entity instance can be assigned to a status, where the status values must be discrete, unambiguous and consistent. There can only be one status per instance and role at a time. VITA implementations should keep a tally of all status transitions of an entity instance in such way that it is possible to reconstruct the role and status of the entity instance for any point or interval of time.

Presence

Presence means the fact, that an instance of a person entity is physically there at a particular location at a particular time. This abstract construction covers even cases of explicit absence, i.e. when the entity is not present at that location at that time.

VITA applications keep a presence log for each person entity. Each log entry is established through a recognition event, i.e. when the entity is recognized by a dedicated observer (human or automatic).

Recognition might happen implicitly, e.g. when other data are obtained directly from the entity. In these cases, the time and location of the observer are used for the record. Recognition can also happen explicitly, i.e. in response to observation requests. In such cases, the observation time and location are determined by the request.

Locations in presence records represent geospatial features, which can basically be of any valid feature class (points, polygons, lines etc.). Where references to locations are used, they must be universally unique and resolvable; otherwise the referred geospatial information have to be enclosed in the database and/or communication.

In contrast to that, time in this regard means one exact time point, to be stored as coordinated universal time (UTC, Gregorian date including century) with a minimum precision of one second. References or relative times must not be used.

Presence Conditions:

Check-In	arriving at this location for storage/accommodation
Check-Out	released from this location after storage/accommodation
Reconfirmation	re-confirmation of storage/accommodation at this location (on request)
Found	only temporarily at this location, accidentally found
Procedure	temporarily at this location for a procedure
Transit	temporarily at this location between two transfers (specify origin and destination)
Transfer	released from this location to be transferred to another (specify destination)
Missing	no longer present at this location, but missing
Lost	no longer at this location, but destroyed/disposed/deceased here

Names

Names are used to identify persons in human communication. However, names of persons do not have to be unique nor do they have to be exact. The following name fields are mandatory to exist in individual person records:

• first_name the first names (or the only name) of the person, in romanized script
• middle_name the person's middle name (if customary), in romanized script
• last_name the last name (mostly the family name) of the person, in romanized script
• local_name the full name of the person, in a local language and script

Conventions:

• Any of these mandatory name fields may be empty in a particular record except first_name.
• A name field value starting with a question mark ? indicates that this part of the name is uncertain or unknown.
• 'first', 'middle' and 'last' refer rather to the usual writing order of a person's full name than to the meaning of the name parts.
• There is no need to split the full name into segments if that is not customary in the person's country of origin - in such case first_name should represent the person's full name.
• In case there are multiple local languages, the local_name should be in the language/script that is most likely readable by that person and/or their relatives.
• An application may define additional name fields to represent e.g. titles, nicknames or pseudonyms, however, these additional fields must not be used to repeat or replace any of the mandatory fields.

Implementations

• Sahana Eden Person Management (in progress)