‘The Ontology of Terrorism’ with Professor Barry Smith.

Date: 9th of Nov 2016
Venue: School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Russell Square, Room L67 (main Building of Soas)
Time: 4-6 pm

Abstract:
Notoriously, intelligence agencies face the problem of Connecting the Dots. Connecting, here, means not only cross-identifying the individuals referred to in different sources, but also combining in useful ways all the data about such individuals. Ontologies allow analysts to harvest combinable information from messy inputs by providing consistent sets of terms for describing the entities involved. Suppose, for example, that ontology terms have been used to tag collections of heterogeneous source data about, say, persons in Baghdad. Analysts can then use the results to identify all available data regarding, say, persons who speak Armenian, or persons with expertise in Java programming; and they can do this independently of the type of data (text, images, audio)which served as inputs. To be effective, however, ontologies need to contain not just terms but also definitions. To illustrate how this works we will consider some simple examples of ontology building, concluding with an ontological approach to the definition of terrorism.

Short Bio:
Barry Smith studied philosophy in Oxford and Manchester, and currently works in the University at Buffalo, NY, where he is Director of the National Center for Ontological Research. Smith’s work in applied ontology is well known especially in the fields of biology and medicine, but his ideas are now being applied in a range of different military and intelligence initiatives. He has worked also on ontology projects relating to legal and economic institutions, and since 2000 he has served as consultant to Hernando de Soto, Director of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru, on projects relating to the advancement of property and business rights among the poor in developing countries.