After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, academics have been called on for possible contributions to research relating to national (and possibly international) security. As one of the original founding mandates of the National Science Foundation, mid-to-long term national security research in the areas of information technologies, organizational studies, and security-related public policy is critically needed.

Similar to medical and biological research that faces significant information overload and yet also tremendous opportunities for new innovation, law enforcement, criminal analysis, and intelligence communities are facing the same challenge. We believe, similar to “medical informatics” and “bioinformatics,” there is a pressing need to develop the science of “intelligence and security informatics” – the study of the use and development of advanced information technologies, systems, algorithms and databases for national security related applications, through an integrated technological, organizational, and policy based approach.

We believe active “intelligence and security informatics” research will help improve knowledge discovery and dissemination and enhance information sharing and collaboration across law enforcement communities and among academics; local, state, and federal agencies; and industry.

Many existing computer and information science techniques need to be re-examined and adapted for national security applications. New insights from this unique domain could result in significant breakthroughs in new data mining, visualization, knowledge management, and information security techniques and systems. For example, social network analysis technologies and methodologies could be adopted to uncover and understand Bin Laden’s terrorist networks to assist the intelligence community in detecting future attacks. Visual data mining techniques such as association rules and multi-dimensional information visualization could be used to identify criminal relationships. Record linkage and string comparator algorithms could be useful for criminal deception detection.

This first NSF/NIJ Symposium on Intelligence and Security Informatics aims to provide an intellectual forum of discussions among previously disparate communities: academic researchers (in information technologies, computer science, public policy, and social studies), local, state, and federal law enforcement and intelligence experts, and information technology industry consultants and practitioners. Several federal research programs are also seeking new research ideas and projects that can contribute to national security.