A Mission Library for Mission Plan Management

Kane, S., and von Kelsch, E. Presented at the 8th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2017), Los Angeles, CA (July 2017) When Navy pilots create a new mission plan, they frequently build off of prior missions. Specifically, they duplicate a “master” mission plan that contains official settings, operational specifications, and other information […]

Long-Range Forecasting Using COMPASS Machine Learning

O’Connor, A.1, Bell, R.2, Kirtman, B.2, and Gorman, J.1 Presented at the 7th International Workshop of Climate Informatics hosted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (September 2017) The Climatological Observations for Maritime Prediction and Analysis Support Service (COMPASS) uses machine learning to create long-range forecasts of the probability that future conditions will differ from […]

Probabilistic Modeling of Insider Threat Detection Systems

Ruttenberg, B.1, Blumstein, D.1, Druce, J.1, Howard, M.1, Reed, F.1, Wilfong, L.2, Lister, C.2, Gaskin, S.3, Foley, M.4, and Scofield, D.4 Presented at The Fourth International Workshop on Graphical Models for Security (GraMSec 2017), Santa Barbara, CA (August 2017) Due to the high consequences of poorly performing automated insider threat detection systems (ITDSs), it is advantageous […]

Combining Data-Driven and Theory-Driven Models for Causality Analysis in Sociocultural Systems

Sliva, A. Presented at the Current Challenges in Computing (CCubed) Conference, Napa, CA (September 2017) To better understand and describe sociocultural systems, it is critical that we can create, analyze, and validate social, political, and economic models that capture causal and predictive dynamics. Causality is, however, notoriously difficult to analyze, a challenge amplified by the complexity of […]

Techniques for Managing Stale Mission Information through Card-Based Interfaces

von Kelsch, E., Kane, S., and Muller, C. Presented at the 8th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2017), Los Angeles, CA (July 2017) Powerful tools exist to support mission planning with complex decision making demands. However, these tools are unable to update missions with updated data or provide support for data […]

Are Behavioral Measures Useful for Detecting Cognitive Workload During Human-Computer Interaction?

Elkin-Frankston, S., Bracken, B., Irvin, S., and Jenkins, M. Presented at the 4th International Conference on Human Side of Service Engineering, taking place at the 7th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2016),  Orlando, FL (July 2016) Commonly used techniques for measuring cognitive workload during human-computer interaction are cumbersome or intrusive to task performance. Physiological […]

SPIDER: New Technology for Constructing Sociometric Networks from Personal Network Data

Hopkins, C.1, Young, A.2,and Borgatti, S.2 Presented at the XXXVI Sunbelt Conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA), Newport Beach, CA (April 2016) During the past two decades, there has been a surge in the number of studies applying social network analysis (SNA) to the study of infectious disease transmission. The mapping of […]

Decision-making and Opinion Formation in Simple Networks

Leibovich1, M., Zuckerman2, I., Pfeffer3, A., and Gal4, Y. Knowledge and Information Systems, an International Journal (September 2016) In many networked decision-making settings, information about the world is distributed across multiple agents and agents’ success depends on their ability to aggregate and reason about their local information over time. This paper presents a computational model of […]

Modular Analytics Management Architecture for Interoperability and Decision Support

Marotta, S., Metzger, M., Gorman, J., and Sliva, A. Presented at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD (April 2016) The Dual Node Decision Wheels (DNDW) architecture is a new approach to information fusion and decision-support systems. By combining cognitive systems engineering organizational analysis tools, such as decision trees, with the Dual Node […]

Practical Probabilistic Programming

Pfeffer, A. Practical Probabilistic Programming, Manning Publications, Cherry Hill, NJ (2016) Practical Probabilistic Programming introduces the working programmer to probabilistic programming. In it, you’ll learn how to use the PP paradigm to model application domains and then express those probabilistic models in code. Although PP can seem abstract, in this book you’ll immediately work on practical examples, […]

Modeling Causality in Sociocultural Systems using Ensemble Methods

Sliva, A., Neal Reilly, S., Blumstein, D., Hookway, S., and Chamberlain, J. Presented at the 7th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2016), Orlando, FL (July 2016) Awarded Best Paper at AHFE’s Cross-Cultural Decision-Making Conference When planning operations or designing policy interventions, military decision-makers and policy experts must have an understanding of the world […]

CAML: Machine Learning-based Predictable, System-Level Anomaly Detection

Song1, J., Fry2, G., Wu2, C., and Parmer1, G. 1st Workshop on Security and Dependability of Critical Embedded Real-Time Systems, in conjunction with IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, Porto, Portugal  (November 2016). Security challenges are increasing in distributed cyber-physical systems (CPSs), which integrate computation and physical processes. System security is complicated by both the temporal and safety […]

Laser Vibrometry Target Recognition Enhancement Using an Analytical Researcher’s Workbench

Stouch, D.     In Proceedings of the 2017 Military Sensing Symposium (MSS) Active Electro-Optical Systems Symposium, Gaithersberg, MD (September 2016). For More Information To learn more or request a copy of a paper (if available), contact Daniel Stouch. (Please include your name, address, organization, and the paper reference. Requests without this information will not be […]

Enhanced SSA Threat Analytics based on Probabilistic Reasoning

Stouch, D., Freedman, S., Ruttenberg, B., and Gorman, J. AFRL Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Conference, Kihei, Hawaii (September 2016). For More Information To learn more or request a copy of a paper (if available), contact Daniel Stouch. (Please include your name, address, organization, and the paper reference. Requests without this information will not be honored.)

Applications and Considerations of Augmented Reality Capabilities for Next Generation Human-Computer Interaction to Support Military Shared Mission Command

Wollocko, A., and Jenkins, M. Presented at Human-Computer Interaction International 2016, Toronto, Canada (July 2016) Augmented reality (AR) technology is quickly evolving and providing the capabilities needed to lead the next generation of human-computer interaction, and can be particularly useful in military situations, like Shared Mission Command (MC) and Collaborative Cockpit Displays. To enable traditional software […]

Composable Event Frames for the Integrated Analysis of Sensor Data and Natural Language

Thomsen, E. Keynote Address at the Ontological Approaches to Sensor Data Analysis, Buffalo, NY (May 2016) Sensors exist as parts of larger systems that have the ability to reason about sensor outputs, to decide upon courses of action to be taken, and to engage control processes that will initiate these courses of action. We will describe […]

Combining Cognitive Engineering and Information Fusion Architectures to Build Effective Joint Systems

Sliva1, A., Gorman1, J., Voshell1, M., Tittle1, J., and Bowman2, C. Presented at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD (April 2016) For effective decision making, military Command and Control (C2) requires robust situational understanding produced by translating multi-INT intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) into actionable intelligence. These information products must be delivered […]

Operational Planning using Climatological Observations for Maritime Prediction and Analysis Support Service (COMPASS)

O’Connor1, A., Kirtman2, B., Harrison1, S., and Gorman1, J. Presented at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD (April 2016) The US Navy faces several limitations when planning operations in regard to forecasting environmental conditions. Currently, mission analysis and planning tools rely heavily on short-term (less than a week) forecasts or long-term statistical […]

Towards Card-based User Interfaces Workspaces for Group Mission Planning

Kane, S., von Kelsch, E., Voshell, M., and Kilgore, R. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Supporting Group Work, Sanibel Island, FL (November 2016) Current mission planning interfaces are difficult to understand, cumbersome to use, and do not support the collaborative aspect of group mission planning. To address this critical shortfall, we describe in […]

Investigating Performance Variability in Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination using a Socio-technical Systems Analysis Approach

Danczyk, J., Wollocko, A., Farry, M., and Voshell, M. Presented at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD (April 2016) Data collection processes supporting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions have recently undergone a technological transition accomplished by investment in sensor platforms. Various agencies have made these investments to increase the resolution, duration, […]

Demonstration of an Adaptable Toolkit for the Assessment and Augmentation of Performance by Teams in Real Time (ADAPTER)

Bracken1, B., Palmon1, N., Elkin-Frankston1, E., and Cooke2, N. Presented at the Global Health and Performance Summit, Columbus, OH (May 2016) Teams of individuals must multitask to perform their own work while maintaining shared attention across their teammates. Experimenters who study teams use advanced methods to understand physiological, neurophysiological, and behavioral correlates of individual and team performance, […]

Combining Human Knowledge and Operational Data to Promote Detailed and Effective Reporting

Danczyk, J., Jacobs, P., Kane, S., Farry, M., and Thornton, W. IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA), Orlando, FL (March 2015) There are many task-related factors that drive the complexity and diversity of submarine operations during a mission, including knowing the correct time to make periscope observations, […]

Visualizing Awareness of Submarine Maneuverability and Detectability

Danczyk, J., Jacobs, P., Thornton, W., Kane, S., and Farry, M. Presented at the International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE), Las Vegas, NV (July 2015). Submariners must balance mission imperatives with own ship safety and operational security. A prime measure of safety is avoiding collisions with other contacts, including fishing and other commercial vessels—and especially […]

CREATEing a Semantic Repository for Instructional Material

Hookway1, S., Metzger1, M., Sliva1, A., Patten1, T., Lasser1, S., Wallace1, J., and Long2, R., International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2015 Workshop on LINKed EDucation, LINKED 2015, Bethlehem, PA (October 2015) This document describes the prototype Collaborative Repository and Exchange for Adaptable Training Environments (CREATE) framework. The CREATE prototype was developed to demonstrate how the […]

Renato: A Toolkit for the Collection and Analysis of Network Data

Hogan1, C., Borgatti2, S., Halgin2, D., Floyd2, T., Fagan2, J., and Hopkins1, C. Presented at the XXXV Sunbelt Conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA), Brighton, United Kingdom (June 2015) In this talk, we will discuss and demonstrate Renato (presented as a poster at Sunbelt 2014), a software package for the collection and […]

Towards Visualizations to Support the Construction of Narratives for Analysis

Jacobs, P., Kane, S., Jones, C., Farry, M., and Niehaus, J.     Presented at the International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE), Las Vegas, NV (July 2015). Business, news, financial, and intelligence analysts collect vast amounts of information to compose, reason about, and refine hypotheses that are often communicated as narratives. Narratives are a natural […]

MAVERICK: A Synthetic Murder Mystery Network Dataset to Support Sensemaking Research

Jenkins1, M., Bisantz2, A., Nagi3, R., and Llinas2, J. Presented at the International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE), Las Vegas, NV (July 2015). The MAVERICK dataset was created to support a series of empirical studies looking at the effectiveness of network visualizations intended to support information foraging and human sensemaking within the domain of counterinsurgency […]

Low-level Automation as a Pathway to appropriate Trust in an Intelligent PED Enterprise: Design of a Collaborative Work Environment

Jenkins, M., Wollocko, A., Voshell, M., and Farry, M. Presented at the Fourth International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Applications (INTELLI 2015), St. Julians, Malta (October 2015) In Military Intelligence, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (PED) functions are critical to success. These functions provide an array of capabilities that support the entire lifecycles of intelligence requests. Advanced PED capabilities […]

Providing Decision Support Using Insights from Narrative Science

Koelle, D., Romero, V., Weyhrauch, P., Niehaus, J., Palmon, N., and Pfautz, J. Presented at the International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE), Las Vegas, NV (July 2015). Research in narrative science across academia and industry continually uncovers new insights that have relevance to understanding how narratives affect behavior change in regions around the world. These […]

Extending Generative Models of Large Scale Networks

Lofdahl, C., Stickgold, E., Skarin, B., and Stewart, I. Presented at the 4th International Conference on Cross-Cultural Decision Making (CCDM), Las Vegas, NV (July 2015)   Since the launch of Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006, the amount of publicly available social network data has grown in both scale and complexity. This growth presents significant […]

Ensemble Prediction of Vascular Injury in Trauma Care

Metzger, M., Howard, M., Kellogg, L., and Kundi, R. Presented at the Mining Big Data to Improve Clinical Effectiveness Workshop at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, San Jose, CA (October 2015). Trauma patients suffer from a wide range of injuries, including vascular injuries. Such injuries can be difficult to immediately identify, only becoming detectable after […]

How to CREATE Domain Content for Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Patten1, T., Metzger1, M., Hookway1, S., Sliva1, A., Lasser1, S., Wallace1, J., and Long2, R. Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) Users Symposium (GIFTSym3), Orlando, FL (June 2015) A critical—but often overlooked—step in authoring intelligent tutoring systems is the initial retrieval and extraction of domain content. This step is increasingly challenging as the number and size of […]

Application of Personality Theories for the Design and Development of Cross-cultural Decision-making Tools

Prue, B., Stern, L., Hurley, P., Catto, G., Young, D., and Pfautz, J. Presented at the International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE), Las Vegas, NV (July 2015).   The marketing domain requires the application of techniques from an array of disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, statistics) to understand information’s impact on target market segment behavior in […]

Reasoning on Resident Space Object Hierarchies Using Probabilistic Programming

Ruttenberg1, B., Wilkins2, M., and Pfeffer1, A. Presented at the International Conference on Information Fusion, Washington, DC (July 2015) Hierarchical representations are common in many artificial intelligence tasks, such as classification of satellites in orbit. Representing and reasoning on hierarchies is difficult, however, as they can be large, deep and constantly evolving. Although probabilistic programming provides […]

Dual Node Decision Wheels: An Architecture for Interconnected Information Fusion and Decision Making

Sliva, A., Gorman, J., Bowman, C., and Voshell, M. Proceedings of SPIE 9464, Ground/Air Multisensor Interoperability, Integration, and Networking for Persistent ISR VI (2015). As the modern information environment continues to expand with new technologies, military Command and Control (C2) has increasing access to unprecedented amounts of data and analytic resources to support military decision making. […]

New Human-System Architectures for Multi-INT Analysis

Voshell, M., Wollocko, A., and Lofdahl, C. Science of Multi-Intelligence (SOMI) Workshop, Chantilly, VA (September 2015) For More Information To learn more or request a copy of a paper (if available), contact Arthur Wollocko. (Please include your name, address, organization, and the paper reference. Requests without this information will not be honored.)

Supporting Common Ground Across Multiple Operator Perspectives

Wollocko, A., Farry, M., Voshell, M., and Jenkins, M. Creating Collaborative Solutions for Distributed Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (PED) IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA), Orlando, FL (March 2015) This paper describes how a Cognitive Systems Engineering approach was used to design a collaborative work system for […]

Towards Effective Visualizations for Social Network Analysis: Empirical Study of Human Sensemaking with Network Visualizations

Jenkins1, M., Bisantz2, A., Llinas2, J., and Rakesh3, N. XXXV Sunbelt Conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA), Brighton, United Kingdom (June 2015) Network visualizations are being used increasingly across a range of domains to support visual analysis of complex datasets. However, little empirical research exists on what types of tasks they […]

Providing a Contaminant and Mitigation Analysis Tool for Enhanced Decision Making and Knowledge Acquisition

Danczyk, J., Jacobs, P., and Farry, M. Presented at the 59th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), Los Angeles, CA (October 2015) Environmental awareness has become an important consideration within military training facilities. Facility managers are tasked with scheduling mitigation events to prevent the transport of toxic waste accumulated from training exercises […]

Maps, Space-time Cubes, and Meta-Information for Under-standing Path Information: A Comparative Analysis

Bisantz, A.1, D’Arcy, J.1, Kerker, D.1, Hegde, S.1, Guan, P.1, Voshell, M.2, and Kilgore, R.2 The 58th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Chicago, IL (October 2014) Two experiments were conducted to investigate the usefulness of different geospatial representations in interpreting paths and activities of individuals moving through a complex spatial environment. […]

How to tell a “Good” Cognitive Task Analysis?

Bisantz, A.1, Endsley, M.2, Hoffman, R.3, Klein, G.4, Militello, L.5, and Pfautz, J.6 Discussion panel at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Chicago, IL (October 2014) Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) has become part of the standard tool set of cognitive engineering. CTAs are routinely used to understand the cognitive and collaborative demands that […]

Urban Socio-Cultural Monitoring with Passive Sensing

Farry, M., Bullock, B., and Pfautz, J. In Understanding Megacities with the Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Intelligence Paradigm: Topical Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) and U.S. Army Engineer Research Development Center (ERDC) White Papers in Support of National Security Challenges (2014) The most challenging operational requirement in localized social-cultural situation assessment (SCSA) is to provide timely, local information for […]

RENATO: Rapid Ethnographic Network Analysis Tool

Hopkins, C. Presented at the International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, St. Pete Beach, FL (February 2014) In this presentation, we introduce the Rapid Ethnographic Network Analysis Tool (RENATO), a software package for the analysis of relational data such as found in social network analysis and cultural domain analysis. Historically, researchers have used a combination of […]

MAVERICK Synthetic Murder Mystery Dataset

Jenkins, M., Bizantz, A., J. Llinas, J., and Nagi, R. Retrieved from the University of Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY) Institutional Repository. The MAVERICK dataset was originally created to support a series of empirical studies looking at the effectiveness of network visualizations at support information foraging and human sensemaking. This synthetic dataset is […]

Hierarchical Management of Large-Scale Malware Data

Kellogg, L., Ruttenberg, B., O’Connor, A., Howard, M., and Pfeffer, A. Presented at the IEEE International Conference on Big Data 2014 (IEEE BigData 2014), Washington, DC (October 2014) As the pace of generation of new malware accelerates, clustering and classifying newly discovered malware requires new approaches to data management. We describe our Big Data approach to managing malware […]

Visual Estimation of Human Attributes: An Empirical Study of Context-dependent Human Observation Capabilities

Kerker, D.1, Jenkins, M.2, Gross, G.2, Bizantz, A.2, and and R. Nagi, R.3 Proceedings of IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA), San Antonio, TX (March 2014) Visual estimations of target attributes in a real-world environment are highly context-dependent when the estimations are provided by human observers. For example, the […]

A Framework for Text-Based Search and Navigation of Social Networks for Non-Experts

Koelle, D. Presented at the International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, St. Pete Beach, FL (February 2014) Today’s social network analysis tools provide advanced capabilities that enable experts to analyze and understand the behavior of networks and their constituent entities. Increasingly, non-experts have access to data about network that they can (or should be able to) explore, […]

Modeling Potential and Requirements for Model Predictive Control (MPC)

Lofdahl, C.  Presented at the 5th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (Cross-Cultural Decision Making track), Krakow, Poland. For More Information To learn more or request a copy of a paper (if available), contact Corey Lofdahl. (Please include your name, address, organization, and the paper reference. Requests without this information will not be honored.)

Identifying and Understanding Trust Relationships in Social Media

Lofdahl, C., Pfautz, J., Farry, M., and Stickgold, E. Topical Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) and U.S. Army Engineer Research Development Center (ERDC) Multi-Agency/Multi-Disciplinary White Papers in Support of National Security Challenges (2014) The explosion of social media use over the past decade has yielded an unprecedented amount of data from which analysts can extract information […]

Designing PED Systems Using Simulation

Lofdahl, C., Voshell, M., and Mahoney, S. Engineering Cyber Physical Systems: Machine Learning, Data Analytics and Smart Systems Architecting, San Jose, CA (November 2014) New automated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors and processing technologies provide access to larger amounts of high quality intelligence data. Managing this technology represents a profound system of systems challenge. In […]

Minimizing Energy Consumption in Distributed Ground Sensor Networks by Optimizing Sensor and Relay Radio Placement

Mafusalov, A., Stouch, D., and Moore, T. Proceedings of the 82nd Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Symposium, Operational Energy working group, Alexandria, VA (June 2014) Wireless ground sensor networks provide superior situational awareness in operational areas such as around forward operating bases (FOB) and command outposts (COP), but their deployment is complicated by unpredictable signal […]

A Multi-scale Boosted Detector for Efficient and Robust Gesture Recognition

Monnier, C., German, S., and Ost, A. Presented at the ECCV ChaLearn Workshop on Looking at People, Zurich, Switzerland (September 2014) We present an approach to detecting and recognizing gestures in a stream of multi-modal data. Our approach combines a sliding window gesture detector with features drawn from skeleton data, color imagery, and depth data produced […]

A Generalized Extended Kalman Filter Implementation for the Robot Operating System

Moore, T. and Stouch, D. Presented at the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS 13), Padova, Italy (July 2014) Accurate state estimation for a mobile robot often requires the fusion of data from multiple sensors. Software that performs sensor fusion should therefore support the inclusion of a wide array of heterogeneous sensors. This […]

A Flexible Framework for the Creation of Narrative-Centered Tools

Niehaus, J., Romero, V., Koelle, D., Palmon, N., Bracken, B., Pfautz, J., Reilly, S.N., and Weyhrauch, P. Presented at the 2014 Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative, Quebec City, Canada (July 31-August 2, 2014) To better support the creation of narrative-centered tools, developers need a flexible framework to integrate, catalog, select, and reuse narrative models. Computational […]

Data-driven Generation of Policies

Parker, A.1, Simari, G.2, Sliva, A.3, and Subrahmanian, V.1 SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Springer, New York (2014) This Springer Brief presents a basic algorithm that provides a correct solution to finding an optimal state change attempt, as well as an enhanced algorithm that is built on top of the well-known trie data structure. It explores […]