Research Summaries

Back Russian Gray Maritime Networks for Hybrid Warfare

Fiscal Year 2018
Division Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences
Department Defense Analysis
Investigator(s) Porter, Wayne
Warren, Timothy C.
Sponsor Rapid Reaction Technology Office (DoD)
Summary This project develops a capability that will combine two emerging areas of technology: 1) applies community detection algorithms to open source databases in order to conduct social network analysis of the subgroups of vessels of interest, owners, operators, ports, cargoes, and specific activities associated with Russian gray maritime networks in the Baltic; 2) uses machine learning algorithms to geo-code the sending locations of social media messages and to create hash tables of semantic patterns associated with hybrid warfare provocation, subversion, and violence to provide predictive analysis of Russian dark social networks in the Baltic. Open source data will be used to develop visual two and three dimensional geospatial and relational depictions of the Russian gray maritime network that connects nodes (ships, owners/operators, organizations, ports, activities) so that metrics can be longitudinally measured and integrated into standard maritime domain awareness systems (e.g. Sealink Advanced Analysis (S2A), Seavision). This will improve real-time awareness and tracking for operational purposes. Additionally, newly developed tools for geo-coding the sending locations of messages sent through social media networks, automated estimations of the sentiments expressed in the those messages, and spatial interpolation of those estimates will be used to generate dynamic, data-driven maps of Russian provocation, political unrest, and violence among populations within bounded geographic areas of interest in the Baltic in order to develop a predictive tool for maritime hybrid warfare (gray zone) activity.
Keywords Data Visualization Maritime network analysis Social Media Exploitation predictive analysis
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal