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"PAN TO THE SARAJEVO AIRPORT USING MSIIA."
Jeff: Lynette, I am looking at the airport. There are some transport planes there that could be used to transport SA's (Surface to Air missiles).
Lynette: Let me show you what I found. I'm putting a white-board called 'SA site' into the room. Why don't you bring it up? The image is a recent senior gaze image taken in the exclusion zone. This area is supposed to be inactive.
Jeff: [opens white-board] I've got it up.
Lynette: [circling vehicle on image] There is a vehicle here - something is going on.
Jeff: [circling confusing part of image] What are these?
Lynette: Hmmm... They look like SA-2 launchers.
Jeff: I agree, we should notify the J2.

The above is a transcript from a QuickTurn enabled scenario where Jeff and Lynette, intelligence analysts, work together to discover a newly active surface to air missile site. QuickTurn is a collaborative environment system for multi-source intelligence analysis. A collaborative environment system is one that allows people to work together as if they were in the same room. Multi-source means that various sources of intelligence, like an imaging tool and document browser, are available in an integrated environment.

What is the motivation for building a system like QuickTurn? We can answer that question by looking at the current limitations of image analysis technology:

• Important information and images reside on hard copy, not accessible from an analysts' workstation.
• Collaboration and information sharing between analysts are difficult.
• Knowledge gained by the analyst is lost because there is no method for saving and recalling information between sessions.

The result of these limitations is slow image analysis sessions that repeat the mistakes of the past. The objective of the QuickTurn system is to overcome each of these limitations to achieve an order of magnitude increase in efficiency and quality of analysis. QuickTurn tackles these problems by integrating three solutions produced by MITRE's Advanced Information Systems Center (AISC):

• MSIIA (Multi-Source Integration and Intelligence Analysis) - In itself a multi-source analysis tool, MSIIA provides quick and accurate access to current or past images, radar intelligence and unmanned air vehicle video.
• FISH (Forager for the Information Super-Highway) - FISH is a multiple information source document browser with rapid visual drill down and filter capabilities. Reports generated by analysts are automatically made available for recall through FISH.
• CVW (Collaborate Virtual Workspace) - CVW provides the framework for data and application sharing, virtual video conference meetings and white board technology.

QuickTurn would obviously not be effective if it just threw these technologies together. Accessing multiple systems simultaneously can cause confusion and information overload for a user. QuickTurn addresses this problem with a Multimodal Interpreter that automatically takes input from various sources, such as the mouse, speech, keyboard, and gestures. It then routes this information to the proper sub-system. At the start of the SA scenario, Jeff told QuickTurn, "PAN TO THE SARAJEVO AIRPORT USING MSIIA". The Multimodal Interpreter takes this spoken command, interprets it as a call to the MSIIA system and passes it to the Interface Router. The Interface Router does exactly what its name implies. It routes commands and information to the proper integrated sub-system. While Jeff and Lynette were using the whiteboard technology to mark up the SA site image, the interface router ensured their commands were sent to the collaborate virtual workspace (CVW). The power of the Interface Router is that it is designed for easy integration with any future technologies that may need to be added. A prototype of the QuickTurn system has been built and demonstrated to DARPA.

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For more information about this subject, please contact Rod Holland using the employee directory.

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Collaborative Systems @Work

The QuickTurn system is designed for applications, such as air campaign planning, where it is necessary for many people to pool their knowledge and perspectives quickly to reach a workable plan. Besides air campaign planning, there are many other areas in which a multi-source collaborative system like QuickTurn could be valuable:

• In a 911 call center...instead of operators consulting manuals for a procedure, they could quickly recall video with instructions or collaborate with an expert in the problem area who is on call.
• In dispersed organizations...the ideal team could be assembled on every project through virtual workspaces without the limitations of geography.
• In a support organization... knowledge bases from the organization could be integrated with other vendors knowledge bases into an easily searched single source database for technical solutions.

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For more information, please contact Lynette Hirschmann using the employee directory.

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