John Randles, CEO of Siren, a key Praescient technology partner offering an advanced investigative intelligence platform, recently wrote an article for Intelligence Community News on the importance of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). In the article, Randles makes the argument that in the information age, OSINT has become increasingly important to the intelligence community, matching the importance of more traditional sources like Human Intelligence (HUMINT) and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). Analysts have always relied on OSINT to provide social context that is often missing in classified sources such as motivations, cultural reflections, and atmospherics. However, with the rise of social media, the amount of information that can be pulled from openly available sources has grown exponentially leading to a shift in the value of OSINT. As a result, we see the intelligence community trending towards OSINT and searching for new ways to analyze public platforms and take advantage of the abundance of open information. Siren’s investigative intelligence platform is designed with this shift in mind, empowering analysts to combine traditional and new intelligence disciplines in a single application. With tools for processing news and media sources in real-time, Siren’s platform is poised to capitalize on the OSINT revolution which is one of many reasons why Team Praescient is so excited to have them as a strategic technology partner. 

While Randles provides an interesting take on the OSINT use case specifically, he also touches on a much larger topic in the defense and intelligence space. Today’s challenges are clearly shifting trends in intelligence gathering and analysis, and it is our job as technology providers and data analysts to think about the ways that technology can be adapted and applied to address this generational shift. This concept has been at the forefront of Praescient’s development strategy since our foundation. We use many different analytical platforms that see the world similarly, but each is uniquely poised to respond to emerging global issues. Our technologies combine tried and true analysis methodologies with cutting edge tools to perfectly blend tradition and innovation. This balance makes our platforms equipped to handle cases intelligence analysts have faced for decades and also prepared to take on emerging challenges that are set to reshape the way we conduct intelligence analysis in the future. 

Today’s Applications

To bring these ideas into perspective, we can look at how some of our technologies have adapted to assist international crises in the past year. With the spread of COVID-19, we saw health organizations across the world scramble to find solutions for tracking the spread of cases in communities. In response, Praescient worked with our partners at IBM to develop workflows for enhanced contact tracing using the suite of IBM i2 technology tools. One of the key components to our approach was to fuse structured and unstructured data sources and push them into link, geospatial, and temporal visualizations in order to build out an infected individual’s pattern of life. Building out this network allows an analyst to identify the reach of a positive case and assists healthcare professionals with their rapid response to notifying others at risk of COVID-19 transmission based on their contact with the infected individual. 

Another one of Praescient’s core technology partners, Esri, has been on the front lines of wildfire response efforts across the US West Coast. Esri is a leading provider of geospatial intelligence software and services and has a long history of providing crisis support in a range of cases from natural disasters to armed conflicts. Earlier this year, Esri provided assistance to first responders in the Australian Bush Fires. Esri not only developed maps showing the locations of wildfires and their projected spread based on the ground conditions, but they also built damage assessments and reported on air quality to help disaster relief organizations and inform the public. This month, Esri adapted their wildfire workflows to provide as much support as possible to first responders fighting fires along the US West Coast spanning from California to Oregon. We are proud to have a partnership with Esri, an organization committed to innovating in the face of adversity.

While many industries have slowed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providers of data analytics technology and services have been busier than ever adapting to the emerging challenges facing our communities. Shifting trends in defense and intelligence are providing an opportunity to innovate, and our team at Praescient Analytics is up for the challenge. To help support our clients in these changing times, Praescient has developed a series of upcoming online training courses on our platinum partner technology, IBM i2 Analyst’s Notebook. Our courses will have you conducting advanced workflows in just a few short sessions with our expert trainers. From general courses to mission-specific use cases, we will work with you to ensure you have an optimized training experience to help your analysts stay on top of cutting edge analytics. Now is truly the best time to take advantage of all of the workflow design and development happening in the data space. With recent transformations in intelligence collection and analysis, staying on top of innovation in the technology field is more important now than ever.

To register for a Praescient Analytics Online i2 Analyst’s Notebook Training Course, click here. 

For more information on IBM i2 Enhanced Contact Tracing, click here.

For more information on Esri’s Disaster Relief efforts, click here.