Annual RFP: Winter 2020 – 2021

CINA Request for White Papers

Submit proposals through EasyChair: CINA Annual RFP, Winter 2020-21

Download full RFP document (incl. submission guidelines)

For full consideration, apply by: Jan 29, 2021

For questions, please contact: Kerry Riddle, [email protected].

CINA is seeking white papers presenting research ideas intended to address questions and challenges that CINA, DHS, and/or its federal partners are currently facing, or are expected to be facing in the near future. This RFP invites proposals that will address main challenges represented by the four research themes of the CINA Center. Submissions will be accepted through Jan 29, 2021. CINA leadership and DHS center managers and sponsors will review white paper submissions, and request detailed statements of work for proposals selected for further review. The process typically takes approximately 12 weeks from white paper receipt to SOW request. A formal request for full SOW development does not guarantee a grant award. Projects typically range from 6-24 months in duration (pre-transition) and have funding levels from $50k to $250k per year. Research projects selected for funding are expected to start work between July – September, 2021.

Key Themes for this RFP

This RFP invites proposals that will address main challenges represented by the four research themes of the CINA Center:

Challenge Area 1: Criminal Network Analysis

Today, sophisticated networked criminal activities cross communities and borders in pursuit of illicit profit, wreaking havoc on societies and devastating communities around the world. The criminal networks pursuing these activities have evolved from simple, localized, mostly hierarchical structures into complex, distributed, highly sophisticated networks that operate across the physical and cyber spaces, and also at a variety of scales, ranging from local to international. Detecting, analyzing, monitoring, and dismantling such activities presents a number of scientific and operational challenges. Overall, we seek to advance our understanding of the operational models of these networks (e.g. their characteristics, interdependencies, vulnerabilities, decision-making process, and recruitment mechanisms), and our ability to capture and analyze relevant information from diverse data sources (ranging from authoritative to open-source content).

In the above context, topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Network analysis: Issues of interest include network structure discovery and modeling, activity detection and disruption, link prediction, multilayer network analysis, and artificial intelligence or other approaches to facilitate the automation of such analysis.
2. Criminal network operations: Issues of interest include advancing our understanding of how such networks recruit members, organize their operations (including assessing the extent to which they rely on technology to pursue their goals), advertise their services, communicate and interact internally and externally (e.g. with other illicit networks, such as terrorist networks), invest their profits, and how they respond to threats.
3. Cryptocurrency, blockchain, and money laundering: Issues of interest include tracing money laundering operations through digital currency services, including the nexus of illicit networks and terrorism, as well as trade-based money laundering activities and ransomware/cryptocurrency patterns.
4. Illicit supply and value chains: Issues of interest include improving our ability to map illicit supply and value chains in the physical and cyber spaces, identifying the nexus of various illicit chains (e.g., human trafficking, opioids, weapons, terrorism), and devising methodologies and tools to assess vulnerabilities and weaknesses of these chains.
5. Online content similarity assessment: Issues of interest include techniques that advance our ability to analyze anonymously contributed online content (e.g. tweets, posts, ads) in order to map network structures, understand information diffusion and influence patterns, establish authorship, and identify commonalities and connections across diverse data sources.
6. Increasing speed, efficiency and accuracy of network analysis: Issues of interest include techniques to facilitate quick and accurate exposure of network connections for investigators using diverse data sources acquired from different sources and jurisdictions.

Challenge Area 2: Dynamic Patterns of Criminal Activity

Analyzing criminal activities across the physical and cyber spaces and over time, to identify relevant patterns and trends, is essential for the emergence of more effective response strategies. As the analysis of patterns of criminal activity enters the era of big data, we are facing newfound challenges and opportunities. Some challenges and opportunities are associated with the breadth and diversity of relevant datasets, and the ability to study relevant patterns at both macro and micro spatiotemporal settings. Conquering these challenges will allow us to better understand how, where, and when criminal activities occur, and to better predict where they will be occurring next.

In the above context, topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Innovative spatiotemporal pattern detection: Issues of interest include the detection of relevant spatiotemporal patterns from diverse datasets, and the ability to contrast such data to diverse complementary datasets (e.g., sociodemographic or economic data) in order to advance our understanding of the correlation between place and crime and the mechanisms that drive the birth and death of crime hotspots, including forecasting future hotspots with machine learning and other tools.
2. Predictive analytics: Issues of interest include innovative approaches for the discovery of cascading patterns of complex networked criminal activities in order to advance our ability to predict forthcoming events and devise appropriate response strategies.
3. Convergence: Issues of interest include convergence of different criminal networks and activities, e.g., drug networks and human smuggling (for example shared actors and routes), or connections between Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing and human trafficking in supply chains into the United States.
4. Current crime patterns: Issues of interest include network analysis of retail theft, identifying the sponsors and beneficiaries of grey market movement of electronics, vulnerability in emerging alternative payment mechanisms and legislation to counter threats, identification of hotspots for illegal border crossing, and analysis of crime concentration or related metrics.

Challenge Area 3: Forensics

In the context of networked criminal activities as they are studied by the CINA Center, the center’s research interests span both traditional and digital forensics. Traditional forensics are boosted by the emergence of technological solutions that may revolutionize the manner in which they are conducted. Digital forensics presents some emerging challenges, as digital evidence is no longer just specific to information obtained from computers or smart phones, but now includes smart devices, the internet of things, vehicles, and a myriad of sensors – essentially anything with the ability to store and or process digital data. Accordingly, investigators require updated methods for the acquisition and analysis of data stored on digital media.

In the above context, topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Field collection, filtering, and triage tools: Issues of interest include tools and techniques for collecting data from cyber physical and embedded systems in the field, to include approaches and algorithms for filtering at the point of collection and performing field triage on digital devices and media prior to seizure (of particular interest are methods which apply across a wide range of devices based on ubiquitous access interfaces and common internal structures). Also of interest are studies which catalog data retention and transmission behaviors of digital devices, whether embedded or standalone.
2. Accessing encrypted containers, media, and devices: Issues of interest include methods for accessing and decrypting encrypted digital content on devices (broadly applicable methods are of the most interest, but device- or class-specific mechanisms are of interest as well), methods for virtualizing devices and encrypted storage to facilitate research, exploration, and brute force methods of access and decryption, and parallel processing algorithms and techniques for brute force and analytic processing.
3. Biometrics: Issues of interest include methods for circumventing and deceiving biometric authentication mechanisms (may include, but is not limited to, creation of fake biometric inputs), and issues associated with privacy in the use of such information.
4. Deployed Biometrics: Issues of interest include the utilization of DNA short nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) technology to more quickly and more thoroughly identify related/unrelated individuals than current rapid DNA short tandem repeat (STR) technology; utilization of drones to detect human remains.
5. Evidence correlation and discovery: Issues of interest include methods and algorithms for discovering correlations and associations across diverse digital evidence sources and formats (approaches may be automated or human-assisted).

Challenge Area 4: Criminal Investigative Processes

Criminal investigative processes are transformed through innovative tools and analyses that expand our capability to collect, manage, protect, analyze, and share large amounts of structured and unstructured data. Furthermore, there is an increased need to assess the impact of these investigative processes not only on the networked illicit activities, but also on society at large.

In the above context, topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Multimedia analytics: Issues of interest include advanced video and audio analysis solutions that support investigations, including but not limited to advancements in the content-aware transmission of large image data in mobile environments, and the synthesis of multiple views in support of forensics analysis.
2. Assessing intelligence gaps in criminal investigations: Issues of interest include techniques to assess information gaps in on-going investigations, and use this knowledge to better focus said investigations (e.g. through the recommendation of additional data collection, evaluation, and analysis processes). Also of interest are methods and approaches to automate lead generation and criminal case construction, to include checklists and guides for investigators.
3. Measures of effectiveness: Criminal investigative processes have direct and indirect impacts: directly on the criminal operation itself, by disrupting it, and indirectly on society, by improving the conditions of communities that were affected by these criminal operations. We are interested in innovative approaches to assess these impacts of investigations, as well as quantifying the real and potential impact of a given criminal network or criminal activity.
4. Interviewing Human Trafficking Victims: Human trafficking victims pose unique challenges to interviewers, though their cooperation is essential to the prosecution of human traffickers. Research studies identifying and/or testing appropriate methods to interview this understudied population are requested.
5. Predictive policing: Issues of interest include establishing and validating behavioral factors and indicators exhibited by suspected perpetrators to be utilized by law enforcement officers at entry portals via human observation and/or video analytics.

Additional Areas of Interest:

Cross-Cutting Applications: There is particular interest at this time in applications that relate to opioids, human trafficking, supply chains, and the use of cryptocurrency to support illicit activities. Therefore, we would particularly encourage proposals that present innovative approaches to study these problems. This includes, in addition to the above-identified challenge areas set in the context of these application areas, the establishment of searchable databases for these problems.

Training: Issues of interest include training programs for investigators and analysts regarding tools and techniques to improve efficiency, accuracy, and completeness.