CHARLES RIVER ANALYTICS, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: NGA191-007

Description

At the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the ability to serve and analyze data is crucial to the success of efforts ranging from disaster relief to strategic military support. NGA recently created the Office of Automation, Augmentation, and Artificial Intelligence (AAA) which has a goal “to automate routine tasks to give crucial time back to employees.” These automated systems must provide high-confidence results that can be relied on by analysts. To earn this confidence, machine learning algorithms require large training data sets with highly accurate labels. The image analysis process to compile this training data is tedious, not engaging, and often outright boring. We propose to design and demonstrate the feasibility of Gamified Analysis Tasks for Heightened Engagement across Repetitions (GATHER). GATHER produces training data for automated image intelligence algorithms using a gamified framework for geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) production and verification. Within this framework we develop “At the Map’s Edge,” a novel, lightweight survival-crafting game, to shape narratives around gamified analysis tasks that motivate analysts to perform high quality, efficient image content extraction. GATHER will increase the speed and effectiveness of training data generation, ultimately providing higher quality automation to free analysts for the most challenging and high-impact tasks.