Intelligence Community Developing a Virtual World for Analytics
The Analyst Space for Exploitation (A-SpaceX) is working on two projects aimed at exploiting virtual worlds for information analysis. The first is a virtualized desktop to solve the problem of analysts bouncing back and forth between different projects and having to start over from scratch each time for security reasons. Jeffery Morrison, who runs the program, wants to build in visual metaphors for information that he calls "mind snaps." The second is a virtual world tracking events in real-time that allows analysts to move back and forth across time and space to get snapshots of changing situations. "You're not going to have an avatar just for the sake of having one," Morrison told GovExec.com. But he also told the site that avatars could find a place in an environment established for analysts to swap information.
Along those lines, and in concurrence with some projects already in the works, he sees a benefit for virtual worlds as cultural training islands. Forterra has been at work with both the military and the intelligence community to establish projects in line with all these goals.
A-SpaceX is a four-year project, and Morrison doesn't expect to have any virtual worlds completed for operation in that time frame, but he hopes to have the groundwork laid.
Retired Air Force General Bernie Skoch, a consultant with Suss Consulting in Jenkintown, Pa., added that if projects like these succeed, virtual worlds could be "golden for the future of predictive analysis."
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