THRUST AREA 2 – NETWORK SCIENCES

Thrust Area 2 leverages the characterization of networks to anticipate, identify, thwart, and recover from WMD-related incidents.

Physical Networks

Modeling and design to enable response, resilience, and recovery of interdependent, multi-layered physical networks after exposure to nuclear weapon detonation effects. Of particular interest are tools to assess the state of network – characterize impact/vulnerabilities, identify/represent root cause of cascade failures in interdependent networks, and identify strategies to enhance network robustness, resilience, & recovery.

Information/Social Networks

Identification of intent to acquire/use WMD, improved semantic analysis methods to identify WMD-related activities, and development of foundational analytic methods to generate actionable information from data resident on networks.

Machine Cognitive Networks

Mitigation of risks to forces by development of improvements to autonomous systems for counter-WMD operations including enhanced machine cognition and reliable performance within WMD environments that may be entrenched, radiation-rich, or hardened and deeply buried.

For a list of what we have funded in the past, see our Complete Award History (Excel).


Success Stories