University of Maryland Launches Counter-Terror Portal

Source Article HERE.

From 'Computer World': Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a portal that policy analysts and counter-terrorism groups can use to forecast terrorist behavior based on past actions. "This is intended as a platform and an environment [that] Department of Defense (DoD) analysts and others involved in counter-terrorism can use as a way to learn how these groups are operating based on real data," said V.S. Subrahmanian, computer science professor and director of the University of Maryland's Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).

The SOMA Terror Organization Portal (STOP) uses publicly available data on more than 110 terror groups from around the world. It uses a real-time data extraction tool called T-REX to scour and extract data from more than 128,000 articles a day on average from 180 news sites in 93 countries. That data is then organized into tables with multiple rows and columns. SOMA, or Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents, then uses the information to create rules about the various terrorist groups -- and what they're likely to do -- in its database. SOMA has generated tens of thousands of such rules about the likely behavior of about 30 groups, including organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Hezb-I-Islami in Afghanistan. A built-in prediction engine allows policy analysts and other users to run various queries and what-if scenarios against the data.

In tests conducted by the University, SOMA proved to be accurate in predicting an outcome about 90% of the time. For the tests, university researchers considered each group with at least 10 years worth of data in the database. For instance, the data proved useful in predicting events such as a spike in attacks against government targets, or attacks against civilians inside or outside the country. What was not possible were predictions that pinned down specific targets or timelines. The SOMA portal is partly funded by the DoD and is currently being used by analysts from four different defense agencies.