Title: Soft metrics: What are they and what use are they for the Intelligence Community?

Authors: Mihaela D. Quirk

Addresses: Decision Applications Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87544, USA

Abstract: Modern decision making challenges the human capacity to reason in an environment of uncertainty, imprecision, and incompleteness of information. Atop the uncertainty, ranking in the presence of multiple criteria, multiple agents, and heterogeneous sources of information is often the main task to accomplish by the analysts in the Intelligence Community (IC). Soft metrics are attributes of decision criteria that cannot be expressed numerically. These metrics are at the core of a computational engine that is perception-based, with computational |atoms| expressed in natural language (NL). The soft metrics approach as a basis for natural language-based computing contributes to fast analyses and an efficient use of human resources in contemporary decision making such as: intelligence data analysis, the Global Strike (target pairing), risk analysis, threat assessment, strategic interactions, conflict analysis, and the strategic deterrence assessment.

Keywords: soft metrics; decision analysis; intelligence community; fuzzy logic; decision criteria; natural language; intelligence data analysis; target pairing; risk analysis; threat assessment; strategic interactions; conflict analysis; strategic deterrence assessment; information processing; information quality; fuzzy sets; decision ranking.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIDSS.2009.031416

International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems, 2009 Vol.2 No.4, pp.335 - 349

Published online: 02 Feb 2010 *

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