HSCB Focus 2010 Overview

1. HSCB Focus 2010 Overview August 5-7, 2009 Chantilly, Virginia Sponsored by Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD), Human Social Cultural Behavior Modeling Program Reported by Kathy Ertell

2. Conference Purpose Sponsored projects (grantees) demonstrate progress Idea exchange between program leadership, contractors, users, and stakeholders Feedback on direction and success of HSCB for program leaders Identify new partners and evaluate current partners Planning for transitions, demonstrations, integration Exploration of funding opportunities Networking

3. Attendees Military – Army, Navy, Air Force, DTRA, DARPA Defense Contractors – large and small Universities – many National Laboratories – small contingent International government – Canada, Netherlands About 600 attendees

4. Technical Session Focus Areas Model validation and verification Architecture for socio-cultural modeling Operational influence modeling and decision support Mission rehearsal and training Visualization and geo-spatial analysis Social network analysis Understanding human behavior Advancing analytics in irregular warfare Transitioning HSCB tools

5. Model Validation and Verification How to evaluate predictive models to see if they are valid, and if they can be verified – are they relatively accurate and reliable? Theories and methods Special techniques for validating social-cultural and human behavioral models Computational science methods Test beds Continuous testing once models are deployed Expert systems analysis

6. Architecture for Socio-cultural Modeling Conceptual design and operational structure of computer systems and programs New architectures to support design, development, operation of socio-cultural models Limitations of computer architecture Integration of existing tools Designing user interfaces Focus on what’s being developed, not what’s existing

7. Operational Influence Modeling and Decision Support How modeling can help commanders identify trends and develop courses of action How models can forecast based on collecting, extracting, and assessing data from various sources Cultural geography – environment, people, things, operations, laws, cultural norms Approaches to predict behavior – demonstration projects, analogies to models used for other purposes Using data from communication (email, media, blogs) Resources for insurgency/terrorism prediction

8. Mission Rehearsal and Training Training the military forces in cultural issues Resources, programs, and needs Learning models, theory Tools: simulation of intercultural interactions, interpersonal skill development, role playing, scenarios Game-based training Web-based training Continuous training Evaluation: does the training help?

9. Geo-Spatial Visualization and Analysis How GVA fits into the military mission Approaches to visualizing the data, model outputs to make it useful to end users, who are not computer gurus Gaps and challenges in the GVA tools in use Reports from projects that are refining current tools and developing new tools Probably the most well-developed technique – has its own conference

10. Social Network Analysis State of SNA in the military: gap in practice and theory, stand-alone capabilities with little integration of tools and results with other analysis Developing meaningful and useful SNA – demonstrate the value to the military Validation techniques – does it work? Individual SNA tools and integration – analyzing media, web, crowd, community behavior, as groups Crowd behavior test bed: Target Behavioral Response Laboratory Visualizing belief systems from SNA

11. Understanding Human Behavior Cognitive neuroscience –brain responses to events and messages, and correlates of decision making Using opinion surveys to measure political unrest Behavior of crowds in labs and computer simulations Tools for using stories and narratives to understand people and their behavior Cultural influences on reasoning Conflict modeling Nonverbal behavior

12. Advancing Analytics in Irregular Warfare Irregular warfare: struggles among state and non-state actors for status, legitimacy, influence in their population or country Old models of warfare do not fit irregular warfare DOD needs to be able to analyze the irregular warfare environment Challenges in development, data analysis, verification How to do better analysis

13. Transitioning HSCB Tools Roundtable discussion – how to make progress in getting applications to the end users Need for open source data to improve quality of science Need to link language and culture, and make better use of machine-language translation – needed because of the huge volume of data Overcoming skepticism among end users Understanding the military and its culture, in order to make tools the military can – and will- use

14. General Impressions The military is looking for answers to problems they have never faced before – new techniques for new situations. There is skepticism in the military about whether HSCB modeling will work. There is enormous enthusiasm among defense contractors and universities for participating in the work. Many presentations seemed pie-in-the-sky, still conceptual, not well-developed – perhaps due to only 6 months of work. Heavy emphasis on computer analytics and modeling of easily available data – not much on gathering data about individuals.

15. More General Impressions Defense contractors and academia had, by far, the largest number of attendees. DOE Labs did not present any work that was unexpected or out of character with our usual missions DOE work focused on predictive analytics and computational methods DOD actively seeking to involve small business and academia – role for National Labs may be limited. Many attendees were networking and looking for funding opportunities. DOD was actively evaluating their contractors.