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IAO-Intel An Ontology of Information Artifacts in

the Intelligence Domain

Barry SmithUniversity at

BuffaloNY, USA

Tatiana MalyutaCUNY, NY, USA

Data Tactics, McLean, VA

Ron RudnickiCUBRC, Buffalo

NY, USA

William Mandrick Data Tactics

McLean, VA, USA

David SalmenData Tactics

McLean, VA, USA

Peter MorosoffE-Maps, Inc.

Washington, DC, USA

Danielle K. DuffI2WD

Aberdeen, MD, USA

James SchoeningI2WD

Aberdeen, MD, USA

Kesny ParentI2WD

Aberdeen, MD, USA

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Military Doctrine and Standardization of Terminology

3rd Century BC Standardized beacon signals used by Chinese military along Great Wall

1792 Drill manual for the units of the Continental Army to respond uniformly to commands during the Revolutionary War

1943 General James Gavin’s Training Memorandum on the Employment of Airborne Forces

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General James Gavin, On to Berlin: Battles of an Airborne Commander 1943-1946

for success of the D-Day invasion‘one of our most critical needs was to standardize the operating practices of our forces. … even simple terminology had to be agreed upon. … British flew in what they called “bomber stream” formations, We preferred troop-carrier group formations of 36 planes that flew in a V ... We referred to landing area as the “jump area,” the British called it “drop zone,” …’

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Current state

• DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (Joint Publication 1-02)

• New military dictionaries and terminology artifacts continue to be developed

• Dominant ethos: Library Science (all terminologies are equal), Lexicography (logical consistency of definitions is not important)

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Goals of Doctrinal Documents• Advance consistency in communications• Facilitate consistent interpretation of

commands• Compile lessons learned (outcomes assess

ment)• Provide controlled vocabularies for official

reportingNowadays• Enhance discoverability and analysis of data

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Problems of Doctrinal Documents

• Little aid to computation

• Developed independently in divergent and non-principled ways

• Low possibility of aggregation causing failures of data integration initiatives

• New approaches needed that can enable computational discovery, retrieval, integration and processing of data

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Two kinds of data

1. Data about entities in the world (topics, subject-matters)

standard ontologies

2. Data about the information artifacts in which these entities are represented (= metadata)

Information Artifact Ontology and extensions, including IAO-Intel

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Information artifact

• (roughly) an entity created through some deliberate act or acts by one or more human beings, and which endures through time, potentially in multiple (for example digital or printed) copies

Examples: a diagram on a sheet of paper, a video file, a map on a computer monitor, an article in a newspaper, a message on a network, the output of some querying process in a computer memory

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IAO• IAO-Intel – to provide common resources for

the consistent description of information artifacts of relevance to the intelligence community in a way that will allow discovery, integration and analysis– compare Dublin Core (brought to you by Library

Science)http://stids.c4i.gmu.edu/presentations/tutorial2013.php

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What IAO is for• IAO is not designed to replace existing doctrinal

or other standards • lots of documents exist conforming to lots of

different standards• purpose of IAO is to allow generation of the

needed metadata in a uniform, non-redundant and algorithmically processable fashion

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Sample terms in IAOReportSummaryDiagramOverlayAssessmentEstimateListOrderMatrixTemplate

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Strategy of Building IAO-IntelIAO IAO-Intel (examples)Report Intelligence Report (FM 6-99.2, 126) Summary Electronic Warfare Mission Summary (FM 6-

99.2)Diagram Network Analysis Diagram (from JP 2-01.3)Overlay Combined Information Overlay (JP 2-01.3)Assessment Assessment of Impact of Damage (FM 6-99.2)Estimate Adversary Course of Action Estimate List List of High-Value Targets (JP 2-01.3, II 61) Order Airspace Control Order (FM 6-99.2, 17)Matrix Target Value Matrix (JP 2-01.3, II-63)Template Ground and Air Adversary Template (JP 2-01.3)

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IAO-Intel

The IAO-Intel terms on the top are defined by using terms from the ontologies on the bottom with the help of relations such as is-about, created-by, derives-from and so forth

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Attributes of Information Artifacts• Examples

– Purpose– Life cycle Stage (draft, finished version, revision)– Language,– Format– Provenance– Source (person, organization)

• These are generic attributes, common to all areas• IAO will contain a Low-Level Ontology module for

each dimension

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Generic Purpose Attributes– Descriptive purpose: scientific paper, newspaper

article, after-action report– Prescriptive purpose: legal code, license, statement

of rules of engagement– Directive purpose (of specifying a plan or method

for achieving something): instruction, manual, protocol

– Designative purpose: a registry of members of an organization, a phone book, a database linking proper names of persons with their social security numbers

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Attributes Specific to Intelligence IAsRole in the Intelligence Process (JP 3-0, III-11) Priority Intelligence Requirement (PIR)

Commander’s Critical Information Requirement (CCIR)Essential Element of Information (EEI)

Essential Element of Friendly Information (EEFI)Confidence Level (JP 2.0, Appendix A)

Highly LikelyLikelyEven Chance

UnlikelyHighly Unlikely

Discipline (JP 2.0, I-5)LegalIdeologyReligionPropaganda

IntelligenceSignalHuman Rumor intelligenceWeb intelligence

Intelligence Excellence (JP 2.0, II-6)AnticipatoryTimelyAccurateUsable

CompleteRelevantObjectiveAvailable

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Use of IAO-Intel – Example:Digitalizing an MCOO

• IA #1 - Modified Combined Obstacle Overlay (MCOO) - a joint intelligence preparation of the operational environment product used to portray the militarily significant aspects of the operational environment, such as obstacles restricting military movement, key geography, and military objectives.

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Digitalizing an MCOO

• Annotations to the attributes of IA#1– ICE: MCOO – IBE: Acetate Sheet – uses-symbology MIL-STD-2525C– authored-by person #4644

• Annotations relating to the aboutness of IA#1 – Avenue of Approach – Strategic Defense Belt – Amphibious Operations– Objective

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Computational Support for Process Planning

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Use of IAO-Intel – Example 2Digitalizing U.S. Army Report and Message Formats (FM 6-99.2)

Standard templates for– Intelligence Report [INTREP] – Intelligence Summary [INTSUM]– Logistics Situation Report [LOGSITREP]– Operations Summary [OPSUM] – Patrol Report [PATROLREP]– Reconnaissance Exploitation Report [RECCEXREP]– SAEDA Report [SAEDAREP]

defined in free text

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Digitalizing FM 6-99.2• formulate FM 6-99.2 definitions

computationally • enable computational cross-reference FM 6-

99.2 documents with comparable sets of documents prepared by other commands.

• use results for computer-aided aggregation of the represented data, cross-checking for mismatches, identifying suspect sources, and so forth.

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DoD Instruction 8320.02, August 5, 2013 Sharing Data, Information, and Information Technology (IT) Services in the Department of Defense

• requires that ‘all salient metadata be discoverable, searchable, and retrievable’ through use of the DSE

• Even if all authoritative sources are registered at DSE, it does not achieve its goal because– Heterogeneous definitions and descriptions– No benefits of inferencing and of rapid introduction

and definition of new terms• IAO will go some way to solving these problems

through semantic tagging

IAO-Science IAO-IntelIAO-Computing

IAO-Biolo

gy

IAO-Physi

cs

IAO-Intel-Navy

IAO-Intel-Army

IAO-Intel-FBI

IAO-Software

EMO-Email

Ontology

Each module built by downward population from its parent

top level

mid-level(generic hub)

domain level(spokes

populating downwards)

Information Artifact Ontology(IAO)

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)

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Continuant

IndependentContinuant

Specifically DependentContinuant

Quality Information Content

Entity

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GenericallyDependentContinuant

Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity

Information QualityEntity

depends_on concretized_by

BFO

IAO

IndependentContinuant

Specifically DependentContinuant

Quality Information Content

Entity

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GenericallyDependentContinuant

Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity

Information QualityEntity

depends_on concretized_by

universals

instances

this hard drive, that book

this excitation pattern,

that pattern of piles of ink

this pdf file, that Target Value Matrix

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IAO and BFO

BFO: Generically Dependent Continuant

BFO: Independent Continuant

BFO: Specifically Dependent Continuant

Information Content

Entity (ICE)

Information Quality Entity

(Pattern) (IQE)

Information Structure

Entity (ISE)

Information Bearing

Entity (IBE)

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Example of IAO-Intel OrganizationInformation Artifact IBE ISE ICEMS Word file (.doc, .docx)

Hard drive (magnetized sector) MS Word format Varies

KML file Hard drive (magnetized sector) KML Map overlay

JPEG file (.jpg) Hard drive (magnetized sector) JPEG format Image

Email file Hard drive (magnetized sector)

Internet Message Format (e.g., RFC 5322 compliant) Message

USMTF Message file A specific government network USMTF Format Message

PassportPaper document; (may include photographs, RFID tags)

ID formats, security marking formats …

Name, Personal data, Passport number, Visas …

Title Deed Official paper document Varies VariesReport Varies Varies VariesOverlay Sheet( e.g. Map Overlay Sheet)

Acetate sheetMIL-STD-2525 Symbols; FM 101-1-5 Operational Terms and Graphics

Map overlay

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DSGS-A Ontologies• US Army’s Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS-A)

Standard Cloud (DSC) initiative as part of a strategy for the horizontal integration of many different types of warfighter intelligence data

DSGS-A Ontologies providing a common framework for • Explica tion of general terms used in source intelligence

artifacts and in data models, terminologies and doctrinal publications which provide typo logies of intelligence-related IAs to semantically enhance data in a way that enables computational integration and reasoning

• Annotation of the instance-level information captured by such IAs to aid retrieval of information about specific persons, groups, events, documents, images, and so forth

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are due also to Mathias Brochhausen, Werner Ceusters, Mélanie Courtot, Janna Hastings, James Malone, Bjoern Peters, Jonathan Rees, and Alan Ruttenberg for their work on IAO.