The Technology

IIWARS, the Information-Fusion based Indication & Warning Assessment and Recognition System, is tapping KBSI's expertise in text mining technologies and information fusion to improve the DoD's terrorist threat assessment capabilities.

The IIWARS system begins by processing and "mining," using advanced text and data mining methods developed at KBSI, data from multiple, distributed text sources (news feeds, web databases, traffic reports, radio intercepts, human intelligence). The system then uses the results of the mining to extract multiple features and "indicators" of an emerging or actual threat. These indicators are then fused by IIWARS into a threat model which is next compared to hypothesized threat Course Of Action (COA) "templates." IIWARS will use these comparisons to present a threat assessment and suitable courses of action.

IIWARS's innovative methods include asymmetric threat course of action templates, text and data mining for instantiating these templates for asymmetric threat assessment, information fusion, and hybrid threat learning using machine learning and ontology-assisted methods. According to Dr. Perakath Benjamin, the technical lead for KBSI on the project, IIWARS will dramatically improve homeland security operations "The statistical nature of the text mining and pattern instantiations in IIWARS facilitates dynamic and adaptive threat monitoring and prediction. The system can successfully monitor patterns of behavior and learn from those patterns without being tied to particular contexts or even to particular languages."

There are numerous applications for IIWARS among government agencies including emergency response planning, intelligence analysis, international narcotics smuggling prediction and response planning, coalition operations planning for both military and humanitarian missions, etc. The IIWARS technology has a significant commercial potential as well: financial fraud detection, business intelligence, supply chain monitoring and management, epidemiology applications (such as modeling and predicting epidemic outbreaks), manufacturing systems monitoring and control, etc.

For more information on IIWARS and KBSI's other research and technology projects, e-mail technology@kbsi.com.