HR001120S0019-09 Sequential Phase II Proposal

Location Analysis and Text Integration for Geospatial Operations, LATIGO, is a proposed system to aid the US government’s efforts in identifying critical mineral deposits which are vital for the US’ economy and national security. These minerals, such as lithium and cobalt, are crucial to a number of technologies essential to the US’ future, ranging from clean energy to national defense. Access to these critical minerals is fraught with risks, though, as current reserves lie mostly outside of the US. Thus, it is paramount for the US to establish its own sources to reduce its reliance on critical mineral imports. However, the workflow for assessing potential critical mineral locations has proven to be a significant hurdle as it is laborious and time-consuming, fraught with challenges in areas such as data acquisition, extraction, and transformation. If its current trajectory is maintained, it will take upwards of 50 years for the US to assess each of the minerals it has deemed critical to the US’ future, only further widening the gap between the US and its global competitors. Organizations within the US government have publicly acknowledged the need to explore how AI can enhance these methods for identifying and securing these critical minerals. LATIGO addresses this need with its unique AI-assisted capabilities that will leverage novel algorithms to provide a foundation for numerous analytical tasks including text analysis, natural language processing, geospatial mapping, etc. to transform and accelerate the workflow for critical mineral assessments. LATIGO’s key innovations revolve around the following: 1) AI-enabled data discovery, 2) Metamodeling for optimizing the subject matter expert attention, and 3) Automating model registration, retraining, and evaluation ecosystem. LATIGO’s contribution will ensure that the US can continue to innovate and compete in the future. In parallel with LATIGO’s development, the team will deploy a structured and iterative process to elicit valuable feedback from operational end users to ensure alignment with end user needs and requirements, maximizing adoption and use. The LATIGO system will have broad potential and application across US government agencies and commercial entities in need of AI-assisted tools to improve workflows that are similarly varied and complex.