Big Open Source Social Science (BOSSS)

Boston Fusion Corp. and Arizona State University propose to research and develop Big Open Source Social Science (BOSSS). In BOSSS, we will create a unified approach that combines social and computer science methodologies to collect and interpret big open source data, yielding meaningful focused analysis of selected populations. We will develop a system framework that adaptively learns social behavior patterns that may indicate changes in the populations priorities, public opinion (or perception of public opinion), and social discourse. BOSSS will investigate, design, implement, demonstrate, validate, mature, and transition to operational use an innovative capability to (1) Identify, collect, and extract meaningful information from multi-model open source data that is relevant to the operational domain; (2) Organize and store the multi-modal, multi-scale, uncertain information in a manner that enables learning and discovery; (3) Exploit the stored data to measure and validate social science indicators of population characteristics; and (4) Interface with operators and decision makers to control the process and interpret the results. In Phase I, we will capture requirements and develop system concepts demonstrating the feasibility and promise of the BOSSS system concept to be realized in Phase II.