SBIR-STTR Award

Successful military actions are becoming increasingly dependent on the compatibility of the military actions with the sociocultural and environmental context in which they occur. The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate the scientific merit and feasibility of a decision-making aid that will reveal the sociocultural characteristics most relevant for evaluating the possible success or failure of potential military operations and provide early warnings of emerging threats. We propose a methodology based on principles of signal processing, to generate probabilistic assessments of the potential outcomes, vulnerabilities, and risks for various operations. Our integrated approach to multi-disciplinary data analysis will provide the ability to detect and amplify “weak signals” – sociocultural characteristics of a population that are not readily apparent in any single set of observations but that may be predictive of military outcomes or serve as early warnings of emerging threats. TerrametricsLLC will use its substantial database on Sub-Saharan Africa for this proof-of-concept analysis.

Keywords:
Weak Signal Detection, Sociocultural Terrain Maps, Early Warning Of Emerging Threats, Predictions Of Military Outcomes, Population Characterization, Improved Decision-Making,

Successful military actions are increasingly dependent on their compatibility with the sociocultural and environmental landscape in which they occur. Pre-emptive actions require the identification of populations that are becoming vulnerable to conflict, and locations that are breeding grounds for terrorism. The challenge is to identify the “signal within the noise” within the massive array of disparate data and to identify through data fusion the various indicators or combination of indicators that reveal the critical characteristics for decision-making. In Phase I we successfully provided a proof-of-concept for a deployable, automated decision-making tool that fuses diverse social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental data for predicting the success of proposed military actions in areas of interest and providing early warnings and alerts for activities that are precursors for hostile responses, outbreaks of conflict, and breeding grounds for terrorism. In Phase II we will be developing a fully operational proto-type that was demonstrated to be feasible under Phase I, and that can go to commercialization.

Keywords:
Weak signal detection, sociocultural terrain maps, early warning of emerging threats, predictions of military outcomes, improved decision-making, data fusion, geoinformatics,