The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Charles River Analytics Inc., a developer of advanced technologies for intelligent systems, with a contract award to support the Graph Understanding and Analysis for Rapid Detection – Deployed on the Ground (GUARD DOG) project. GUARD DOG will help soldiers analyze human networks more quickly and identify key figures in real-time. GUARD DOG will use graphs, algorithms, and other software tools to analyze and predict human behavior. As part of this effort, Charles River is designing the Detection, Explanation, and Prediction of Emerging Network Developments (DEPEND) system. DEPEND will allow soldiers and intelligence analysts to rapidly discover, monitor, and predict changes in the people, organizations, and events they encounter, providing real-time assessments of threats and vulnerabilities. The three-year contract is valued at $4 million.
“Under the DEPEND program, we will develop a system to automate the Collect-Update-Analyze-Prioritize cycle. This cycle determines how information about the human terrain is collected by patrols on the ground and passed to higher echelons, where it is analyzed and new information collection priorities are specified,” explained Dr. Avi Pfeffer, Senior Scientist at Charles River. DEPEND uses social network theory and social network extraction algorithms to analyze ambiguous information and produce estimates of local and regional networks of people, groups, and organizations. Dr. Pfeffer continued, “Once the network is analyzed and estimates are produced, advanced analysis algorithms will detect, explain, and predict trends and potential threats, allowing analysts to easily identify the most promising strategies for information collection.”
Charles River’s teammates for DEPEND include Dr. Lise Getoor and Dr. Amol Deshpande of the University of Maryland, Dr. Steve Borgatti of the University of Kentucky, and Dr. Ben Taskar of the University of Pennsylvania.
Charles River has supported DARPA for over a decade in areas such as human computer interaction, socio-cultural modeling, collaboration-support systems, and dynamic real-time operating systems. Dr. Scott Neal Reilly, Vice President, Decision Management Systems, said, “We are very excited about the opportunity to contribute to the GUARD DOG program. We are looking forward to working with DARPA and our exceptional teammates to provide innovative technologies that will help soldiers better understand the social context in which they are conducting counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, and counter-drug missions.”
This material is based upon work supported by the Air Force Research Lab.
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