Communications of the ACM
Shrinking the Haystack
Technologists are producing software that can show which areas should be searched for hideouts and weapons caches or be put under surveillance.
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Technologists are assisting counter-terrorist forces in the West and abroad in a major way by producing software that can show which areas should be searched for hideouts and weapons caches or be put under surveillance.
They are modifying existing mapping software to produce "geographic profiling" programs.
Counter-terrorist forces feed the programs the times and coordinates of bombings and the location of extremist groups' leafleting and graffiti. The programs then crunch the data, and analyze it in the context of information about the country's terrain, road network, ethnic make-up, and shifting patterns of tribal alliance.
The U.S. Army developed SCARE-S2 geoprofiling software for use in Afghanistan, and more than 90 intelligence agencies around the world use Rigel Analyst from ECRI in Vancouver. The ArcGIS software analyses global-positioning system data provided by smartphones and other gadgets that are equipped with global-positioning system kits.
The number of pertinent actions that can be plotted is booming, so the software is likely to become an even more critical tool in years to come. The technology works particularly well in areas in which patterns of belief are tied closely to geography, notes Brent Smith at the University of Arkansas' Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies.
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