CIF21: DIBBs: Building a Unified Infrastructure for Data Integration on Political Violence and Conflict

建立一个统一的基础设施，用于政治暴力和冲突的数据集成这一建议是一个概念化项目，其中几个主要的数据收集的领导人，沿着叛乱，种族冲突，恐怖主义，计算机科学和数据管理方面的专家，将围绕一个统一的基础设施，政治暴力数据收集和集成建立共识。该项目将创建一个可扩展的本体，重点关注与所有形式的政治暴力相关的四个领域：冲突，演员，地理和事件。这一本体论基础设施将使研究政治暴力，包括其根源和后果的研究人员和决策者能够从世界各地的学术机构和非政府组织目前收集的主要政治暴力数据库中获取和整合现有数据。这一基础设施还将促进发展新的非线性和语义分析方法，以破解冲突和暴力的复杂动态。最后，这一基础设施将为下一代关于暴力和冲突的数据收集提供一个平台，为新的数据收集项目建立一个灵活的框架，既便于交换，又符合所开发的基于共识的本体。拟议的项目包括一个为期两天的利益攸关方讲习班，一个用于政治暴力数据收集的本体基础设施的示意性设计，以及一个基于网络的社区主持的问题跟踪维基，以鼓励参与性开发和完善本体。此外，拟议的项目支持NSF的核心任务之一？大数据计划，专注于发展与国家安全相关的数据基础设施。 智力优势：尽管近年来科学家们在对政治暴力的经验性理解方面取得了重大进展，但由于世界各地的主要项目基本上是自主和不协调的，进一步的进展受到阻碍。该项目将通过创建一个专注于对政治暴力至关重要的领域的可扩展本体来解决这一弱点。这个企业的主要目标是设计一个整合世界的战略？在一个可扩展的平台上，该平台不仅允许更新原始数据，还允许添加新的数据和变量，包括来自社交媒体的快速变化的数据集。该提案已建立了足够的资源，以举办为期两天的利益攸关方会议，在会议之前为利益攸关方准备预读材料，设计并配备人员建立一个wiki，以便与研究界联系，并编写一份最后报告，作为实施所设计的本体论提案的跳板。通过整合主要的数据库，提供增长的基础设施，并向全世界提供最终产品？在美国的研究界，拟议的活动可能会对政治暴力科学产生变革性的影响。 更广泛的影响：这种本体论的方法来收集政治暴力数据将提供关键的见解，数据整合和推进暴力冲突的科学研究。在主要的政治暴力数据收集的本体的有效识别将提供一个重要的路线图，这些数据结构的整合和新的应用程序的开发和分析研究国家安全。此外，该讲习班将有助于将高级和初级教师与研究生联系起来，从而培养新一代的政治暴力问题专家。将讲习班报告翻译成一个由社区主持的、基于网络的问题跟踪维基，将有助于扩大参与范围，使其他研究人员也能参与进来，他们将有助于为现有和今后的数据收集工作界定和塑造一个更大的本体结构。

Building a Unified Infrastructure for Data Integration on Political Violence and Conflict This proposal s a conceptualization project whereby leaders of several major data collections, along with experts in insurgency, ethnic conflict, terrorism, computer science, and data management, will build consensus around a unified infrastructure for political violence data collection and integration. The project will create a scalable ontology focused on four domains relevant to all forms of political violence: conflicts, actors, geographies, and events. This ontological infrastructure will allow researchers and policy makers who study political violence, including its etiology and consequences, to access and integrate existing data from the major political violence data collections currently collected at academic institutions and non-governmental organizations around the world. This infrastructure will also facilitate the development of new non-linear and semantic analytical methods to decipher the complex dynamics of conflict and violence. Finally, this infrastructure will provide a platform for the next generation of data collection on violence and conflict by creating a flexible framework for new data collection projects that is both easily exchangeable and adheres to the consensus-based ontologies developed. The proposed project incorporates a two-day stakeholder workshop, a schematic design of the ontological infrastructure for political violence data collection, and a web-based community-moderated issue-tracking wiki to encourage participatory development and refinement of the ontologies. Additionally, the proposed project supports one of the core missions of NSF?s Big Data initiative, focusing on the development of a data infrastructure relevant to national security. Intellectual Merit: Although scientists have made major advances in the empirical understanding of political violence in recent years, nonetheless further advances are being hindered by the fact that leading projects from around the world are largely autonomous and uncoordinated. This project will address this weakness by creating a scalable ontology focused on domains critical to political violence. The major goal of this enterprise is to design a strategy for integrating the world?s most important data bases on political violence within an expandable platform that will allow not only updating original data but the addition of new data and variables, including rapidly evolving data sets derived from the social media. The proposal has built in sufficient resources to host a two-day stakeholder conference, to prepare read-ahead materials for stakeholders before the conference, to design and staff a wiki for reaching out to the research community and for developing a final report that will serve as a springboard for a proposal to implement the ontology designed. By integrating the major data bases, providing an infrastructure for growth, and making the end product available to the world?s research community, the proposed activity could have a transformative impact on the science of political violence. Broader Impacts: This ontological approach to political violence data collection will offer critical insights for data integration and for advancing the scientific study of violent conflict. Effective identification of ontologies across major political violence data collections will provide an essential roadmap for the integration of these data structures and the development of new applications and analysis for research on national security. Additionally, the workshop will serve to network senior and junior faculty alongside graduate students thereby developing a new generation of political violence experts. The translation of the workshop report into a community-moderated and web-based issue-tracking wiki will serve to expand participation to include other researchers who will be instrumental in defining and shaping a larger ontological structure for both existing and future data collection efforts.