CINA Request for White Papers
Issue Date: March 15, 2019
Extended white paper submission due date for full consideration: April 12, 2019
Contact info: Ms. Kerry Riddle; Phone: (703)9934409; Email: cinaRFP@gmu.edu
Web: https://cina.gmu.edu
Download full RFP document (incl. submission guidelines).
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:
Network analysis: Issues of interest include advancing community structure and detection, link prediction, and multilayer network analysis.
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.
Cryptocurrency, blockchain, and money laundering: Issues of interest include tracing money laundering operations through digital coin services, including the nexus of illicit networks and terrorism, as well as trade-based money laundering activities.
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 devise methodologies and tools to assess vulnerabilities of these chains.
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 identify network structure, information diffusion and influence patterns, authorship attribution, and commonalities across diverse data sources.
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:
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
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.
Challenge Area 3: Forensics
In the context of networked criminal activities as they are studied by the CINA Center, the spectrum of forensics spans from traditional to digital forensics. Traditional forensics are boosted by the emergence of technological solutions that may revolutionize the manner in which they are conducted. The digital part of this spectrum presents in particular some newfound challenges, as digital evidence is no longer just specific to information obtained from computers or cell phones, but can now include smart devices across the internet of things. Accordingly, investigators require updated methods for the acquisition and analysis of digital media.
In the above context, topics of interest include but are not limited to:
Field collection / filtering / 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).
Accessing encrypted containers/media/devices: Issues of interest include 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.
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.
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.
Evidence correlation / 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 expend 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 the society at large.
In the above context, topics of interest include but are not limited to:
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.
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).
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.
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 and developmentally appropriate methods to interview this understudied population are requested
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.
Cross-Cutting Application Areas of Interest
There is particular interest at this time in applications that relate to opioids, human trafficking, 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.