This proposal outlines a system that leverages the installed base of personal communications devices (cell phones, handhelds, two-way pagers) and adds a simple mechanism that lets people generate short structured reports of suspicious activity. We propose a method of supplying flexibly structured data objects ("u-forms") from the field by extending existing personal information systems to supply these objects. This enables the human intelligence network as well as other applications. U-forms facilitate machine-assisted analysis by providing a consistent information syntax. They support evolving information needs by being self-describing and schema-free. They can be generated in a distributed fashion without losing information consistency, but can be easily consolidated to support fusion into a single knowledge base. They are lightweight and independent of any particular hardware or software implementation, so they are applicable in a wide range of domains (including very small processor or bandwidth-limited devices). This project will result in a design and information architecture for an ad hoc human information network, as well as a small-scale prototype implementation demonstrating the feasibility of the approach. Such a network has immediate application in the detection and disruption of asymmetric threats, as well as numerous obvious commercial applications. One need only consider the popularity of existing personal communication systems (cell phones, SMS, instant messaging, email) to imagine possible commercial systems built on such a network. Such a network will also be useful in more traditional civil emergencies, providing, for instance, a way to implement highly effective natural disaster response coordination.
Keywords: Human Information Network, Ubiquitous Computing, Distributed Computing, Pervasive Computing, Ad Hoc Networks, Information Architecture, Cscw (Computer
