Intelligence and security informatics: Information systems perspective

TY - JOUR

T1 - Intelligence and security informatics

T2 - Information systems perspective

AU - Chen, Hsinchun

N1 - Funding Information: As one of the original founding mandates of the National Science Foundation in the U.S., mid-to-long-term national security research in the areas of information technologies, organizational studies, and security-related public policy is critically needed. Similarly to medical and biological research, law enforcement, criminal analysis, and intelligence communities face significant information overload and yet also have tremendous opportunities for innovation. We believe that, as in “medical informatics” and “bioinformatics”, there is a pressing need to develop the science of “intelligence and security informatics”—the study of the use and development of advanced information technologies, systems, algorithms, and databases for national security related applications through an integrated technological, organizational, and policy based approach. Many existing computer and information systems techniques need to be reexamined and adapted for national security applications. New insights from this unique domain could result in significant breakthroughs in data mining, visualization, knowledge management, and information security techniques and systems. For example, social network analysis technologies and methodologies could be adopted to help the intelligence community detect planned future attacks, and uncover and understand Bin Laden's terrorist networks. Visual data mining techniques such as association rules and multidimensional information visualization could be used to identify criminal relationships. Record linkage and string comparator algorithms could be useful for criminal identity deception detection. Practical and novel information technologies, techniques, methods, practices, and systems that can contribute to knowledge in this important emerging field are critically needed, including but not limited to areas such as: • Information interoperability and sharing • Knowledge discovery and knowledge management • Criminal data mining, social network analysis, and event detection • Multimedia and multilingual intelligence and security information analysis • Web-based intelligence monitoring and analysis • Deception detection systems • Intrusion detection systems and information awareness • Cybercrime detection and analysis • Agents and collaborative systems for intelligence sharing • Crime and intelligence visualization • Bio-terrorism tracking, alerting, and analysis • Major (natural and man-made) disaster prevention, detection, and management Academic meetings have begun to emerge to encourage research and discussions in ISI-related areas. The First Symposium on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI 2003, http://ecom.arizona.edu/ISI ), sponsored by NSF and NIJ, is such an example. It aimed to provide an intellectual forum for discussions among previously disparate communities: academic researchers (in information technologies, computer science, public policy, and social studies); local, state, and federal law enforcement and intelligence experts; and information technology consultants and practitioners, at a time when several federal research programs, such as the NSF/CIA funded Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination (KDD) program and the NSF Information Technology Research (ITR) program, were seeking new research ideas and projects that could contribute to national security. Jointly hosted by the University of Arizona and the Tucson Police Department, the NSF/NIJ ISI Symposium program committee was composed of 44 internationally renowned researchers and practitioners in intelligence and security informatics research. The 2-day program included 5 keynote speakers, 14 invited speakers, 34 regular papers, and 6 posters. The proceedings were published by Springer-Verlag as Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS 2665) [1] . With overwhelming interest and support from the community, the Second ISI Symposium was held in Tucson on June 10–11, 2004 [2] . Sponsoring federal agencies included NSF, DHS, CIA, and NIJ. Jointly hosted by the University of Arizona, Tucson Police Department, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the meeting was co-located with the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2004, http://www.jcdl2004.org ). It is our belief that meetings such as the ISI Symposium and publications such as this special issue on ISI are critical in helping to develop the science of Intelligence and Security Informatics. 4

PY - 2006/3

Y1 - 2006/3

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=32544451777&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=32544451777&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.dss.2004.06.003

DO - 10.1016/j.dss.2004.06.003

M3 - Editorial

AN - SCOPUS:32544451777

SN - 0167-9236

VL - 41

SP - 555

EP - 559

JO - Decision Support Systems

JF - Decision Support Systems

IS - 3

ER -