| Dr. Colleen L. Phillips is the Sociocultural Tactical Area Manager at ASI. Colleen has over 15 years experience in software development, human factors, and applied artificial intelligence. Her current interests are in behavior meso-modeling (small-group population) and visualization. Current research efforts involve determining the sociocultural factors that affect population interactions, developing computational capacities for predicting changes in population perceptions based on these interactions, and visualization techniques for stratagemical use. | |
Q: What are your interests in sociocultural effects? A: At the intersection of humans and technology is where you will find ASI. The primary goal of ASI's software suite is to augment a group's decision-making or cognitive reasoning power under a variety of situational circumstances taking into account that various populations react differently. ASI can represent people, groups, biological, or physical systems for cognitive modeling in air, space, and cyberspace. Sociocultural effects models can be represented in many different forms. Some of the most useful models are based on theories found in computer science, psychology, anthropology, and social science (use back arrow to return)
Q: What is Sociocultural Modeling?
A: Sociocultural modeling is an umbrella term for theories of cultural and social evolution, which aims to describe how cultures and societies have developed over time. Such theories (pdf - 268kb) typically provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies, social structure, the beliefs, values and goals of a society, and how and why they change with time. Such models are of particular interest to the military in helping unstable regions transition to more stable sustainable states.
Q: What are the current project being undertaken? A: A Phase I award under the OSD SBIR program topic OSD08-07: Learning the Human Terrain (pdf - 45kb), and a Phase II award under the Army CERDEC program topic A06-094: Models to Address (pdf - 68kb) Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic Factors for the Propagation of ideas Through Defined Populations.The technology for each of these projects is discussed here.
Q: What Product/ Offering does your organization provide? A: We can develop a PEM Lens for you! Currently, we are developing a Diplomatic, Informational, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, and Law enforcement (DIMEFIL) effects modeling tool that we call the DEM Lens (DIMEFIL Effects Modeling). This tool is intended for use at the Army brigade level and provides a way to operationalize lessons learned about various cultural reactions to different DIMEFIL actions. The Red team within the brigade is responsible for maintaining a model of cultural beliefs for each group identified within the region. As lessons learned are rolled up from company level daily, the Red team transforms those lessons learned by tweaking the Red model of beliefs. The Blue team is responsible for decomposing the operational order into a set of possible course of action configurations. The Blue team simulates each course of action, and the red model simulates the region’s response to it. The DIMEFIL Effects Modeling tool ultimately allows the brigade to assess their effectiveness in a more holistic way by evaluating how it influences the stability in the region of interest.
Q: What are some of the features of the PEM Lens?
A: 1) Easy creation of a group model. This means that a non-technical user will be able to use the interface to derive an instance of a cultural group from an existing template. The architecture already understands which information services that modeled group needs to receive the world state data it needs and to provide the right interface primitives. 2) Easy maintenance of group belief systems. Again, a non-technical user will be able to use the interface to modify a predefined template of cultural beliefs for each group they are modeling. It is expected that the user will define the propensity toward a particular behavior attribute, as opposed to the behavior attribute itself. 3) Easy definition of interventions or courses of action. Users will be able to inject their set of actions into the simulation and evaluate how the simulated population responds to a particular course of action. The user will be able to roll back to the start point to evaluate alternative courses of action easily.
Q: Who are Users of the PEM lens?
A: Among the users of sociocultural modeling services are those that strive to continually adapt the belief system of the groups they work and interact with as they learn more about their's and other's cultures. Often tasked with resolving a social conflict, the PEM Lens user will explore various scenarios of actions taken within an environment to evaluate how the various groups involved will respond and whether the actions taken were beneficial or not. This will allow the decision maker to simulate the effects of different policies and procedures on the groups affected quickly and inexpensively. These users include:  | Commercial Partners – companies acquiring new employees or new companies, those working outside the US (supply, mfg, service), business intelligence on exploiting known similarities and differences among cultures or marketing segments (e.g. males vs. female buying/spending patterns; young vs. old, etc.). | | | Universities – work abroad programs (acculturalization) and recruiting from outside US, joint departments with other universities outside the US. | | | FBI/police units/other intelligence agencies – interrogations, mind manipulations. | | | Government (defense customers) – Joint, net-centric models of group’s beliefs, desires and intentions for SSTR, warfighter survivability, FCS, C2andI2, and COIN efforts. | | | NGOs and others involved in relief aid. | | | Social scientists or anyone working in the humanities. A government employed historian may offer insight on counterinsurgency tactics of past conflict, a political scientist may project strategic patterns across several terrorist groups, or a psychologist might look at tactics to counter inner city violence. All of these individuals can use the tool to instantiate cultural groups and test theories about how to influence their behavior. |
Q: What are your Selected Publications? A: Selected Publications are listed below. | | | Phillips, C.L., Stitts, K.B., and Geddes, N.D. (2009). ASC: a proposed architecture for computing a social capital gaming metric. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Social Computing: Social Intelligence in App.ied Gaming Workshop. August 29-31, Vancouver, British Columbia. | | | | Stitts, K.B., Phillips, C.L., and Geddes, N.D. (2009). Validation of Sociocultual Models and eta-Models Via Serious Games. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Social Computing: Social Intelligence in App.ied Gaming Workshop. August 29-31, Vancouver, British Columbia. | | | | Phillips, C.L., Geddes, N., and Simms, J. (2009). An Approach to Data Visualization of Group Stratagemical Behaviors and Beliefs. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. July 19-24, San Diego, CA. | | | Phillips, C.L., Sokoloff, S.K., Crosscope, J.R., and Geddes, N.D. (2009). A Validation Process for Predicting Stratagemical Behavior Patterns of Powerful Leaders in Conflict. Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Social Computing, Behavior Modeling, and Prediction. March 31-April 1, Phoenix, AZ. | | | Phillips, C.L., Geddes, N., and Kanareykin, S. (2008). A Balanced Approach for LLOs Using Group Dynamics for COIN Efficacy. Proceedings of the 2nd International Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics Conference, July 14-17, Las Vegas NV. | | | Phillips, C.L., Geddes, N., and Crosscope, J. (2008). Bayesian Modeling using Belief Nets of Perceived Threat Levels Affected by Stratagemical Behavior Pattern. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Cultural Computational Dynamics, Sept 15-16, Washington, D.C. | BACK TO TOP |
