The overall objective of the Counterterrorism Research Lab (CTR Lab) is to specify, develop, and evaluate advanced mathematical models, novel techniques and algorithms, and useful software tools to assist analysts in harvesting, filtering, storing, managing, analyzing, structuring, mining, interpreting, and visualizing terrorist information. In particular, tools and techniques for open source intelligence have been chosen as an important area of research and development for the lab.

Knowledge about the structure and organization of terrorist networks is important for both terrorism investigation and the development of effective strategies to prevent terrorist attacks. Theory from the knowledge management field plays an important role in dealing with terrorist information. Knowledge management processes, tools, and techniques can help analysts in various ways when trying to make sense of the vast amount of data being collected. Several manual knowledge management processes can either be semi-automated or supported by software tools.

The tool philosophy of the lab is that the analysts are in charge and the tools are there to assist them. Thus, the purpose of the tools is to support as many of the analysts’ knowledge management processes as possible to assist them in performing their work more efficiently. In this context, efficient means that the analysts arrive at better analysis results much faster. In general, the tools fall into two overall categories:

1. Semi-automatic tools that need to be configured by the analysts to perform the dedicated task. After configuration, the tool will automatically perform the dedicated task.
2. Manual tools that support the analysts in performing specific tasks by providing dedicated features that enhance the work efficiency when performing manual analysis work

The overall research and development strategy is based on end-user involvement and evolutionary prototyping:

• End-user involvement is important to produce useful prototypes that address real problems and supports the tasks and workflows of the end-users (analysts).
• Evolutionary prototyping is a way to build robust prototypes in a structured manner and to constantly evaluate and refine the prototypes in collaboration with end-users (analysts).

The goal is that the developed prototypes evolve into real products at a later stage.