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

该提案是一个概念化项目，通过该项目，几个主要数据收集部门的领导人，以及叛乱、种族冲突、恐怖主义、计算机科学和数据管理方面的专家，将围绕政治暴力数据收集和整合的统一基础设施达成共识。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、行动者、地理和事件。这种本体论基础设施将使研究政治暴力（包括其病因和后果）的研究人员和政策制定者能够访问和整合目前在世界各地学术机构和非政府组织收集的主要政治暴力数据集的现有数据。这种基础设施还将促进新的非线性和语义分析方法的发展，以破译冲突和暴力的复杂动态。最后，该基础设施将为新的数据收集项目创建一个灵活的框架，为下一代暴力和冲突数据收集提供一个平台，该框架既易于交换，又符合所制定的基于共识的本体论。拟议的项目包括一个为期两天的利益相关者研讨会，一个用于政治暴力数据收集的本体论基础设施的示意图设计，以及一个基于社区的问题跟踪wiki，以鼓励参与式开发和改进本体论。此外，拟议的项目支持国家科学基金会的核心任务之一？大力推进“大数据”建设，重点发展关系国家安全的数据基础设施。智力优势：尽管近年来科学家们在对政治暴力的实证理解方面取得了重大进展，但世界各地的主要项目在很大程度上是自主和不协调的，这一事实阻碍了进一步的进展。该项目将通过创建一个可扩展的本体来解决这一弱点，该本体专注于对政治暴力至关重要的领域。这个企业的主要目标是设计一个整合世界的策略。在一个可扩展的平台内建立最重要的政治暴力数据库，该平台不仅允许更新原始数据，还允许添加新数据和变量，包括来自社交媒体的快速发展的数据集。该提案已经建立了足够的资源来举办为期两天的利益相关者会议，在会议之前为利益相关者准备预读材料，设计和配备一个wiki，以便与研究社区联系，并开发最终报告，该报告将作为实施所设计的本体的提案的跳板。通过集成主要的数据库，为增长提供基础设施，并使最终产品对全世界可用？在美国的研究界，拟议的活动可能对政治暴力的科学产生变革性的影响。更广泛的影响：这种政治暴力数据收集的本体论方法将为数据整合和推进暴力冲突的科学研究提供关键见解。有效识别主要政治暴力数据收集中的本体，将为这些数据结构的整合以及为国家安全研究开发新的应用和分析提供必要的路线图。此外，该研讨会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专家。将研讨会报告翻译成一个由社区主持的、基于网络的问题跟踪wiki，将有助于扩大参与范围，包括其他研究人员，他们将有助于为现有和未来的数据收集工作定义和塑造更大的本体论结构。

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.