University of Maryland (UM) researchers have developed the Spactio-Cultural Abductive Reasoning Engine (SCARE), a system that can predict where explosive caches are located. SCARE uses data from past attacks on U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad to determine where the insurgents hid the bomb supplies. Army Capt. Paulo Shakarian, now a UM computer science doctoral candidate, and UM professor V.S. Subrahmanian fed the program information concerning the ethnic and religious breakdown of Baghdad’s neighborhoods and the location of the attacks and the explosive caches found during 2007 and 2008. SCARE analyzed the data and determined that the typical distances between caches and attack targets ranged from 1.1 kilometers to just under two kilometers. Of 14 predicted cache targets located by SCARE, eight were found to be less than one third of a mile from actual cache sites. Shakarian says data that accurate is very useful to the military. “It’s easier for you to deny [access to or from] the area in a circle 700 meters around these predictions,” he says. The program uses abductive reasoning, by finding the best explanation for a set of observations. The researchers hope to inspire a Pentagon research laboratory to run an independent test of the SCARE program using real-time data on bomb attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. Subrahmanian says SCARE also can be used in non-military situations. For example, the program could be used to model the behaviors or large institutional investors or political organizations, he says.
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