Information Dynamics REF

1
Information Dynamics REF

• April 19, 2001

2
REF Characteristics

• Challenging
• Framework for agent-based systems emphasizing
• Time-sensitive information value
• Non-uniform information access
• Coordinated behavior
• Relevant
• A test-bed environment with clear association to
  problems of interest to the DoD
• Tractable
• Readily available information sources and related
  infrastructure

3
Framework Components

• Networked Environment World (e.g., Web)
• Actors (mobile) Agents
• Actions - What agents do
• Information - Perceived reality
• Information Value - how they choose actions
• Utility function - why they choose actions

4
Problem

• Application Domain Intelligence gathering
  analysis from the Web
• Collection, correlation, extraction
• Confidence, reliability assessment
• Time sensitivity
• Scientific Domain Interaction theory for
  agent-based systems
• Structural relationships
• Interaction models
• Emergent behavior
• Anticipated Outcome Sound principles for
  developing scalable agent-based systems
• Agent interactions at multiple scales
• Improved group performance of agents

5
Driving Needs

• Warning generation
• Crisis intervention
• Terrorist activities
• Unusual movement
• Situation monitoring
• Watch-desk support
• Persistent queries
• Anomaly detection

6
Driving Questions

• The newspaper reporter questions
• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• Why
• Where and when to look for information
• What sources to trust

7
REF Partitions

• Agent Design
• Collaborative search with multiple agents (Brown)
• Temporal extensions and commitments (Michigan)
• Belief, reputation, and trust establishment
  (Texas)
• Behavioral Analysis
• Observations of agent interaction (SFI)
• Explanatory and predictive models (ASU)
• Emergent behaviors (UNM)
• Analysis tools for extracting structure
  (Massachusetts)
• Instrumented Infrastructure
• Test collections and measurement software
  (Veridian)
• Information Dynamics framework (Maryland)

8
REF Approach

• Conduct precise evaluation through exploration
  and evaluation in synthetic environment (e.g.,
  artificial or extracted portion of Web)
• Controlled environment provides ground truth
• Empirically identify real world influences on
  (actual) Web
• Domain dependencies may have skewed experimental
  results
• Precision and recall achievable in bounded
  collection may not scale to actual Web
• Enable rapid iteration between experimental
  environment and real world application

9
REF Team Collaboration

• Email list archive
• Periodic collaboration
• Telephone, teleconference
• Netmeeting, Groove, Jiffy,
• Selective face-to-face meetings, as required

10
Next Steps

• Application domain definition
• Corpus identification
• Infrastructure specification
• Instrumentation requirements
• Functional decomposition
• Interfaces discussion
• Minimal implementation constraints