Program Summary
Current defense systems for processing information struggle to effectively scale to the volume and characteristics of changing data environments and the range of applications for data analysis. Overcoming these challenges requires fundamentally new approaches to data science, including distributed computation and interactive visualization.
XDATA aims to meet these challenges by developing computational techniques and software tools for processing and analyzing large, imperfect and incomplete data. For scalable analytics, this approach includes researching distributed databases, statistical sampling methods and new algorithmic advances to lower the computational complexity of pattern matching. For information visualization, the approach includes developing human-computer interaction tools that are web-based, factor computation between client and server, and build from an open code base to enable rapid customization to different missions.
Warfighters’ missions now rely on a virtual net of sensors and communications systems for battlefield awareness more than at any time in history. At the same time, demands for timely and actionable information have spiked as warfighters at every level—whether at the planning table or on patrol—are called upon to make well-informed decisions. XDATA seeks to develop software to efficiently fuse, analyze and disseminate the massive volumes of data this network produces.