Link Analysis Workbench
Abstract
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, many questions have been asked and investigations were conducted to determine how these attacks could have happened. The consensus is information was available to warn U.S. intelligence organizations of the impending attacks but were not able to "connect the dots," that is bring the vital pieces of information together to paint a clear picture of what is about to happen. An important role of the intelligence organizations is to identify and track situations of interest - terrorist and criminal activity, signs of impending political upheaval abroad. The problem is the analyst is overwhelmed with intelligence reports from many sources that may provide them with incomplete or misleading information. There is a need for information technology to help the analyst with identification of threat cases, tracking and analysis of the data to confirm the emerging threat. The approach taken here is one of link discovery by matching transactional data stored in a relational database to a well-defined scenario describing a threat situation. The Link Analysis Workbench (LAW) is designed to find patterns (scenarios) buried within vast quantities of large and noisy datasets helping analysts find evidence to support the threat described in the pattern.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA426802
Entities
People
- Andres C. Rodriguez
- Enrique H. Ruspini
- Ian Harrison
- John D. Lowrance
- Pauline M. Berry
Organizations
- SRI International