5th Annual
Conference
Mathematical Methods in Counterterrorism
Abstracts
The Mathematical Challenges to Knowledge Systems Technologies for the Intelligence Community
Cliff Joslyn
Chief Scientist for Knowledge Sciences
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Abstract:
Efforts to increase analytical capabilities within the intelligence community face large challenges in the areas of interconnectivity and interoperability of data sources and databases. But simply making information sources mutually accessible can actually increase the difficulties of analysts at the level of their knowledge of areas of interest: mere interconnection does nothing to tell me WHAT information is WHERE within this vast new landscape. Recent advances in semantic technologies, for example the growth of ontological taxonomies, are moving to address this area. But the kinds of data objects entailed by these large knowledge representations in turn require new techniques in discrete mathematics and algorithms. In this talk we will discuss both the mathematical challenges presented by such topics as order morphisms for ontology alignment, lattice metrics for ontology analysis, and path analyses of labeled graphs for knowledge discovery in semantic databases, and some of our own work in these areas applied to intelligence analysis tasks and the development of threat anticipation systems.