The final report by the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (2004) concluded that the attacks on September 11, 2001 were partly successful because information was not shared properly between agencies. Since that time, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DoD) have created a variety of programs and implemented numerous strategies to build a system of information sharing that could detect and prevent large scale physical or cyber terrorist attacks against the critical infrastructures of the United States. The development of "Fusion Centers"...

In an ever-increasing data rich environment, actionable information must be extracted, filtered, and correlated from massive amounts of disparate often free text sources. The usefulness of the retrieved information depends on how we accomplish these steps and present the most relevant information to the analyst. One method for extracting information from free text is Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a document categorization technique to classify documents into cohesive topics. Although LDA accounts for some implicit relationships such as synonymy (same meaning) it often ignores other...

In support of the Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) vision of the layered sensing operations center, command and control intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (C2ISR) more focus must be placed on architectures that support information systems, rather than just the information systems themselves. By extending the role of UAVs beyond simply intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations and into a dual-role with networking operations we can better utilize our information assets. To achieve the goal of dual-role UAVs, a concrete approach to planning must be taken....

Simulation modeling is used in many situations. Simulation meta-modeling is used to estimate a simulation model result by representing the space of simulation model responses. Metamodeling methods are particularly useful when the simulation model is not particularly suited to real-time or mean real-time use. Most metamodeling methods provide expected value responses while some situations need probabilistic responses. This research establishes the viability of Dynamic Bayesian Networks for simulation metamodeling, those situations needing probabilistic responses. A bootstrapping method is...

Computers. information systems. and communications systems are being used in the transportation industry to replace cumbersome, paper-based communications processes. In every US contingency, the lack of visibility over troop movements and cargo shipments has limited the military's ability to effectively conduct operational plans. Current Department of Defense (DoD) initiatives provide some level of in- transit visibility (ITV). but are we using effective tools to gain ITV of all DoD assets within the Defense Transportation System (DTS) The purpose of this study is to address the ITV issues...

Street gangs have plagued the United States for decades. One focus of current gang prevention efforts strives to reduce the number of new recruits to local street gangs. This research proposes the use of modeling and decision analysis to aid in identifying potentially "at risk" children likely to join a street gang. A stronger means of identification of "at risk" children can lead to a more efficient placement of resources to reduce the number of street gang recruits.

Programmable Logic Controllers are used to control and monitor automated process in many Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) critical applications. As with virtually all electronic devices, PLCs contain Integrated Circuits (IC) that are often manufactured overseas. ICs that have been unknowingly altered (counterfeited, manufactured with hardware Trojans, etc.) pose a significant security vulnerability. To mitigate this risk, the RF-Distinct Native Attribute (RF-DNA) fingerprinting process is applied to PLC hardware devices to augment bit-level security. RF-DNA fingerprints are...

The need to share key material with authorized entities in a secure, efficient and timely manner has driven efforts to develop new key distribution methods. The most promising method is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and is considered to be "unconditionally secure" because it relies upon the immutable laws of quantum physics rather than computational complexity. Unfortunately, the non-idealities present in actual implementations of QKD systems also result in errors manifested in the quantum data channel. As a consequence, an important component of any QKD system is the error reconciliation...