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The Probative Rapid Interactive Modeling Environment (PRIME) is a
decision-support web application that provides modeling and reasoning
capabilities intended to stretch the thinking of analysts and
decision makers by producing a forecast of the plausible effects that
could result from taking actions in a given situation. The
plausibility of each forecast effect is explained by one or more
structured arguments. The benefits are intended to be pedagogical
(stretching a users thinking via explanations of the identified
plausible effects) rather than primarily prognostic (via predictive
accuracy).
PRIME identifies plausible effects that could result from performing
candidate actions at a site. Actions, for the purpose of PRIME
modeling, are diplomatic, informational, military, or economic
(DIME). A site includes one or more elements, each an entity or
activity. An entity might be an actor (e.g., a person or
organization), a physical entity (e.g., geographical, such as a
region, country or village, or infrastructural, such as a building or
road), or a conceptual entity (e.g., a religious or cultural icon).
An activity might be occupational (e.g., fishing, trading) or social
(e.g., communicating, voting). Each site element has one or more
types (e.g., a bridge that is also a cultural icon) and zero or more
relations. A relation in PRIME captures a connection between two
site elements. For example, the relation
has-leader could be used to connect a site
element denoting a government (an organization) with another element
denoting the current prime minister (a person). A site can also
include descriptive profiles of its elements (e.g., to capture that a
person is relatively affluent and has a post-graduate education).
To generate a forecast, PRIME uses a library of generic effects
models (or rules) that describe plausible effects of actions on site
elements. These include both the direct effects that actions can
have on site elements as well as the indirect effects that can occur
when changes in an elements state impact the state of related
elements. In addition to the effects models, generating a forecast
requires a model of the site where actions are going to be taken: the
site elements and their relations and descriptive profiles comprise
the model of the site. PRIME must also be given the candidate plan
whose effects are to be forecast; this is simply a set of actions to
be taken against specific site elements. A subject matter expert
(SME) creates these objects in PRIME:
- Direct effects models (accumulated over time to form a
library)
- Indirect effects models (accumulated over time to form a
library)
- Site models (each specific to a site of interest)
- Plans (each specific to a site model, capturing a candidate
course of action being considered for the site)
The models in PRIME rely on three foundational constructs as building
blocks:
- Effects templates containing the dimensions or
categories of interest for describing the effects on site
elements
- Profile templates containing the attributes of
interest for describing site elements (e.g., cultural
variables for profiling socio-cultural entities)
- Taxonomies defining action types, relation types,
and site-element types
Since the templates and taxonomies must reflect the essential
characteristics of the area of interest, we anticipate that they will
be edited to include the types of entities, activities, relations,
actions, effects, and cultural variables of local interest. Given
this ontological, procedural, and situational knowledge, PRIME
generates forecasts, first based on direct effects, then moving to
first-order indirect effects, second-order indirect effects, and so
on. The user may review the forecast at any stage, inspecting
explanations of forecast effects and optionally editing the
forecast. An edited forecast can result in different models being
matched in the successive rounds of indirect-effects generation.
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