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Security, Crime, and Intelligence Innovation Institute

International alliance on distributed analytics via artificial intelligence and machine learning

We have formed a partnership with the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) to create the Distributed Analytics and Information Science International Technology Alliance (DAIS ITA).

Multinational coalition operations in the information age require harnessing digital technologies to unlock the potential of Big Data and the Internet of Things to improve the exchange of vital knowledge and make people safer in front-line situations. This in turn requires improved scientific understanding of how to distribute data analytics across a dynamic and complex information infrastructure in order to understand rapidly evolving situations.

To address this challenge, the UK and US Governments established the DAIS ITA programme in 2016, with funding of up to $80m over ten years. DAIS ITA is a consortium of leading UK and US academic and industry organisations led by IBM, with major research and development operations in both nations.

In addition to Cardiff University, academic and industry partners include:

  • Airbus Group
  • BAE Systems
  • IBM
  • Imperial College London
  • Pennsylvania State University
  • Purdue University
  • Raytheon/BBN Technologies
  • Stanford University
  • University College London
  • University of California at Los Angeles
  • University of Massachusetts at Amherst
  • University of Southampton
  • Yale University.

The Alliance will develop the fundamental scientific understanding to enable us to:

  • optimise our ability to understand complex and rapidly evolving situations involving many actors
  • exploit the data-rich edges of our networks through distributed analytics (thereby avoiding data overload)
  • build agile information networks able to adapt to dynamic changes in their environment and based on user need.

Achieving these goals requires a programme geared towards innovation and disruptive science. Therefore DAIS ITA will build on the model developed under the Network and Information Science (NIS) ITA whose multi-disciplinary approach to exploit synergies between government, industry and academic scientists has been very successful. Furthermore, the exploitation of the science is enabled by a tested technology transition model which facilitates the rapid transition of research results to both commercial and military domains.

The programme is led at Cardiff by Professor Alun Preece (Crime and Security Research Institute / School of Computer Science & Informatics) and involves colleagues in Computer Science & Informatics – Federico Cerutti, Padraig Corcoran, Dave Marshall, Ian Taylor, Liam Turner and Roger Whitaker – and Yulia Hicks in the School of Engineering.

For additional details visit the DAIS ITA Science Library which contains all currently published publications, authors and organizations involved.

For more information on the DAIS ITA project please visit our workspace.