Open Source Indicators Project

The goal of the Open Source Indicators (OSI) Program was to make automated predictions of significant societal events through the continuous and automated analysis of publicly available data such as news media, social media, informational websites, and satellite imagery. Societal events of interest included civil unrest, disease outbreaks, and election results. Geographic areas of interest include countries in Latin America (LA) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The handbook is intended to serve as a reference document for the OSI Program and a companion to the ground truth event data used for test and evaluation. The handbook provides guidance regarding the types of events considered; the submission of automated predictions or “warnings;” the development of ground truth; the test and evaluation of submitted warnings; performance measures; and other programmatic information. IARPA initiated a solicitation for OSI Research Teams in late summer 2011 for one base year and two option years of research. MITRE was selected as the Test and Evaluation (T&E) Team in November 2011. Following a review of proposals, three teams (BBN, HRL, and Virginia Tech (VT)) were selected. The OSI Program officially began in April 2012; manual event encoding and formal T&E ended in March 2015.