Social Networks in Context

The asymmetric threat poses perhaps the most dangerous risk to US forces and assets both overseas and at home. Because of the sheer amount of data available, building dynamic, complex social networks to represent terrorist activities can be very difficult. To overcome this problem, we must identify and utilize advanced techniques to automatically build social networks while also understanding the context they represent. The Decisive Analytics Corporation (DAC) Team proposes an approach termed SOcial Networks In Context (SONIC). SONIC builds on social networking capabilities DAC has already built and additionally provides the capability to identify and understand the roles of different nodes, understand the semantic relationships between entities and automatically identify important clusters of entities within a dynamic social network. Our advanced algorithms developed under this effort will be immediately tested on live data from the theater through DAC’s BOBCAT system – a tool that is on the GSA schedule and in the hands of the Warfighter performing predictive analysis on Iraq data today.