Turning Trash into Gold: New technologies help analysts sift through damaged information for valuable data to support Port and Maritime Security issues

Michael S. Yeagley

(May 1, 2009) Ann Arbor , MI-(PMSO.net) A Port Security team, upon investigating suspect cargo, comes upon piles of discarded, damaged documents that are undecipherable – it's not even clear what language they're in. Today, these materials are reviewed carefully, to see what can be salvaged. The amount of information that can be salvaged, despite how damaged the document looks to the naked eye, might surprise you.

Today's technology has significantly increased the ability to extract information from damaged materials. Building on expertise in artificial intelligence, image analysis, and data mining, scientists are creating solutions that can literally turn trash into gold. For example, NovoDynamics'® software solution extracts critical information from severely damaged documents, and combines this extraction with the most accurate language recognition technology in the world. An advanced Middle Eastern, Asian, Russian and Latin language optical character recognition (OCR) solution, NovoDynamics' VERUS™ recognizes Arabic, Persian (Farsi, Dari), Pashto, Urdu, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, English and French languages. It automatically detects and cleans degraded and skewed documents, automatically identifies a page's primary language, recognizes a page's fonts without manual intervention, determines whether a page contains primarily handwritten or machine-printed text, and allows extracted information to be converted into PDF files. In essence, this technology triages discovered materials, sifting, sorting and deciphering in seconds what used to take humans days to do. This allows trained resources to focus their energies on what they do best – analyzing materials of relevance for actionable intelligence to help keep our ports safe and secure.

The value of these types of solutions is clear – materials that have been discarded by the enemy can become valuable sources of information for analysts. This technology is easily integrated into existing systems to enable document capture, search, classification, and translation, and can enable pattern recognition, predictive modeling, and data mining. When results are integrated into complex event processing analysis, this new information can help lead to valuable insights.

An In-Q-Tel portfolio company, NovoDynamics' technology has many mission-critical uses, including port security initiatives, border patrol, military initiatives and supporting intelligence analysts in any corner of the world. Wherever there are foreign language documents that need to be deciphered, no matter the condition of the document, this technology can help. And it performs its task in seconds, saving personnel time and improving efficiencies so valuable resources can be dedicated to actually analyzing the data and focus on materials of relevance. This cutting edge technology is an integral part of many mission-critical solutions delivered by some of the leading government contractors, including CACI, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, and is used by the international Intelligence Community, major commercial Enterprise Content Management (ECM) firms, and academia.

In-Q-Tel, the strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technology solutions to support the mission of the CIA and the broader U.S. Intelligence Community, first invested in NovoDynamics in February 2003, and made an additional investment in August 2006. Launched by the CIA in 1999 as a private, independent organization, In-Q-Tel's mission is to identify and partner with companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve the national security interests of the United States .

A primary issue for intelligence analysts today across all national security interests is the lack of personnel to review and analyze the large volumes of captured data. To address this issue, information must be quickly and efficiently extracted, indexed and prioritized from both clean and degraded pages. Leveraging new technologies will enable all documents to be scanned, searched, and integrated into the analysis process so that analysts are focusing on the most relevant information. What had taken days to do manually can now be done in seconds, allowing analysts to do what they do best – analyzing information in support of achieving decision advantage.

Michael S. Yeagley is Director of Global Government Solutions for NovoDynamics, Inc., an In-Q-Tel portfolio company, with offices in Vienna, VA. Contact myeagley@novodynamics.com .