[open-economics] IARPA Open Source Indicators (OSI) Program: Proposers' Day Conference, August 3, 2011

[Guo Xu]

Dear list,

Thought this might be interesting to a few of you....

Guo

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jason G. Matheny <jason.g.matheny at ugov.gov>
Date: 3 July 2011 05:14

Open Source Indicators (OSI) Program Proposers' Day

http://www.iarpa.gov/solicitations_osi.html

IARPA-BAA-11-11
Event Date: August 3, 2011

SYNOPSIS

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will host
a Proposers' Day Conference for the Open Source Indicators (OSI)
Program on August 3, 2011, in anticipation of the release of a new
solicitation in support of the program. The Conference will be held
from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The
purpose of the conference will be to provide introductory information
on OSI and the research problems that the program aims to address, to
respond to questions from potential proposers, and to provide a forum
for potential proposers to present their capabilities and find
potential team partners. This announcement serves as a
pre-solicitation notice and is issued solely for information and
planning purposes. The Proposers' Day Conference does not constitute a
formal solicitation for proposals or proposal abstracts. Conference
attendance is voluntary and is not required to propose to future
solicitations (if any) associated with this program.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION AND GOALS

Many significant societal events are preceded and/or followed by
population-level changes in communication, consumption, and movement.
Some of these changes may be indirectly observable from publicly
available data, such as web search trends, blogs, microblogs, internet
traffic, webcams, financial markets, and many others. Published
research has found that many of these data sources are individually
useful in the early detection of events such as disease outbreaks and
macroeconomic trends. However, little research has examined the value
of combinations of data from diverse sources.

The OSI Program seeks to develop methods for continuous, automated
analysis of publicly available data in order to anticipate and/or
detect societal disruptions, such as political crises, disease
outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and natural
disasters. The Program will aim to develop methods that “beat the
news” by fusing early indicators of events from multiple data sources
and types. Anticipated innovations include: development of
empirically-driven sociological models for population behavior change
in anticipation of, and response to, events of interest; collection
and processing of publicly available data that represent those
population behavior changes; development of data extraction techniques
that focus on volume, rather than depth, by identifying shallow
features of data that correlate with events; development of
multivariate time series models robust to non-stationary, noisy data
to reveal patterns that precede events; use of Granger causality,
Phase Slope Index measures, or other novel techniques to estimate
causality in time series; training of classifiers to weight
combinations of time series for generating probabilistic warnings of
events.

OSI will not fund research on U.S. events, the identification or
movement of specific individuals, collection mechanisms that require
directed participation by individuals, or advanced natural language
processing. It is expected that performers will use existing,
off-the-shelf technologies to extract features of interest in publicly
available data, and that research will focus on methods for
correlating combinations of data with events.

Collaborative efforts and teaming among potential performers will be
encouraged. It is anticipated that teams will be multidisciplinary,
and might include social scientists, mathematicians, statisticians,
computer scientists, content extraction experts, and information
theorists.

IARPA anticipates that academic institutions and companies from around
the world will participate in this program. Researchers will be
encouraged to publish their findings in academic journals.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Attendees must register no later than 5:00 pm Eastern time, July 27,
2011 at https://conference.brtrc.com/OSI_PD/Overview.aspx. Directions
to the conference facility and other materials will be available on
that website. No walk-in registrations will be allowed.

Due to space limitations, attendance will be limited to the first 150
registrants and to no more than 2 representatives per organization.
All attendees will be required to present a government-issued photo
identification to enter the conference. Foreign nationals will need to
present a passport.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The late morning and afternoon will include Presentation & Poster
sessions to provide an opportunity for attendees to present their
organizations' capabilities and to explore teaming arrangements.
Attendees who wish to present organization capabilities for teaming
opportunities may submit a request through the registration web site.
Details on the presentation and poster formats, and the procedure for
submitting a request to present, will be provided after approval to
register for the conference has been granted. Time available for
presentations and posters will be limited. Therefore, presentations
will be limited to the first 15 registered respondents who request an
oral presentation, and posters will be limited to the first 15
registered respondents who request a poster presentation. These
presentations are not intended to solicit feedback from the
Government, and Government personnel will not be present during the
presentations. This Proposers' Day is intended for participants who
are eligible to compete on the anticipated BAA. Other Government
Agencies, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs),
University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), or any other similar
organizations that have a special relationship with the Government,
that gives them access to privileged or proprietary information, or
access to Government equipment or real property, will not be eligible
to submit proposals to the anticipated BAA nor participate as team
members under proposals submitted by eligible entities. While such
entities are not prohibited from attending the Proposers' Day, due to
space limitations, preference will be given first to those
organizations that are eligible to compete.

IARPA will not provide reimbursement for costs incurred to participate
in this conference.

Questions concerning conference & registration can be sent to
dni-iarpa-events at ugov.gov.

Questions regarding the program can be sent to dni-iarpa-baa-11-11 at ugov.gov.

Contracting Office Address:
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
Washington, District of Columbia 20511
United States

Primary Point of Contact:
Jason Matheny
Program Manager
dni-iarpa-baa-11-11 at ugov.gov