Course of Action Forecasting
From MilcordWiki
Overview
Course of Action (COA) - available both as a Web or mobile application - integrates temporal and spatial data from multiple intelligence sources, identifies patterns in historical data, and predicts future actions at specified spatial locations.
Need
- Identify the adversary in an asymmetric environment
- Understand local demographics and dynamics
- Anticipate adversary tactics
- Anticipate mission risk
- Reduce information overload in command center and the battlespace
Approach
COA Knowledge Management (CKM) framework extracts entities (people, places) and spatiotemporal patterns (events, relationships) from the unstructured intelligence data, categorizes the extracted patterns using taxonomy model, discovers and manages COA facts using belief nets, and enables the intelligence analyst visualize and explore the extracted facts.
- Fuse Multi-INT data sources
- Learn adversary behavior models
- Use models to forecast risk
- Provide a platform for battlespace intelligence
- Provide tactical intelligence applications, i.e. route planning
Benefits
- Faster adaptation to adversary tactics due to system learning
- Reduced information overload due to predictive reasoning
- Reduced mission risk due to integration of doctrine and events
Applications
- Military: U.S. Army, Marines, SOCOM anti-insurgency operations
- Civilian: FBI, DHS, DOE, USDA, and HHS anti-terrorism operations
- Commercial: Protection of critical infrastructure industries such as utilities, energy, chemical industries
- Competitive Advantages:
- Unlike incident reporting systems, COA learns models and patterns and predict behavior
- COA brings a higher level of automation to IPB process planning and implementation
References
- Caglayan, A., Burke, D., Eaton, G. and Meessen, Y. (2008) “Course of Action Forecasting", Technical Report, DTIC AD Number: ADB338206. US Army TEC, Alexandria, VA.
