Professor John-Paul Clarke has received the Commander’s Award for Public Service from the Army Science Board (ASB).
Clarke received the award and accompanying medal during ceremonies held in Arlington Virginia this past October. The honor recognizes his many contributions to the ASB during a three-year appointment to the Board which will officially conclude in June, 2016.
The director of the GT-AE’s Air Transportation Laboratory, Clarke has frequently been called upon to give expert advice to government and industry groups during his 10-year tenure at Georgia Tech. The Army Science Board is a Congressionally-chartered body that advises the secretary of the Army, the chief of staff of the Army, the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA-ALT), the Army staff, and major Army commanders on scientific and technological matters. Its members are appointed by the Secretary of Defense.
During his three-year appointment, Clarke helped produce three reports on the optimization of American military forces.
In the first report, “Evaluation of the Army Use of Predictive Data for High Risk Behavior,” Clarke and the other members of his ASB study team examined and evaluated the data, models and algorithms used for predictive analysis and the related potential human and ethical dimensions. For example, the report provided a predictive analytic framework to evaluate the likelihood of suicidal ideation and action among individual troops. Specifically, publicly available sources, such as social media, police records, financial records, and criminal judgments are utilized to create a framework in which high-risk individuals may be monitored and proactively helped. That report, like the others, has been sent to the secretary of the Army and the chief of staff for further review.
“It’s surprising how easy it is to predict some things,” said Clarke. “But we also need to be very careful not to sound a false alarm, because we don’t want to initiate an unnecessary response that becomes a permanent negative part of someone’s record.”
In the second report, “Decisive Army Strategic and Expeditionary Maneuver,” the ASB study team identified challenges in 2025 that will effect the Army's ability to conduct strategic and expeditionary maneuver; explored options in joint air- and sea-basing, commercial capabilities and partnering opportunities to improve the Army's ability to maneuver; and identified technologies and other innovations that could improve the Army's strategic and expeditionary maneuver capabilities.
The final report in the series, “Strategies to Optimize Army Operating and Generating Forces for 2025 and Beyond” seeks to develop strategies for rebalancing the Army operating and generating force to retain or gain capabilities in the mid-term (2025) and beyond (2030-2040). It also identifies opportunities to improve the efficiency of operating force combat service support and generating force capabilities to help provide the means to invest in core operational capabilities. The study team identified activities and tasks that could be outsourced to non-military vendors, thus allowing specially trained troops to execute more narrowly on their combat-focused mission.