A Scalable Visual System For Proliferation Analysis

There may never be a time in the future where the threat of nuclear proliferation ceases to exist. Due to the sheer power and potential destruction these weapons possess, the global community must keep a vigilant watch on the spread of this technology. This will remain a critical factor in securing peace and stability in the world. It is for this reason that there must be further advancements in tools which effectively combine data so information is automatically connected, allowing intuitive navigation, visualization, and collaboration. To accomplish this, the proposed web-based application will process data from several proliferation sources, perform entity recognition to discover places, names, and dates, and will store them in a single central database. Documents and other records in this database will be linked together through matching entities, and presented to users as web pages with hypertext links among them. This system will be built on the scalable textual analysis architecture provided by the open source VTK project. As the result of search queries, the system will gather results from different public databases and provide not just a static list of documents, but interactive visualizations showing where and when these events took place. The web service will also provide collaborative forum for building intelligence on proliferation. This software will help researchers understand the state of proliferation in the world, and will aid in the development of accurate models for predicting future proliferation activities. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The proposed work will build upon and contribute back to open source projects, enabling both transparency of algorithms and unlimited possibilities for further enhancement in the future. It also benefits Kitware