PARIS in Los Angeles:
FOR INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT MANAGEMENT AND PREVENTION PURPOSES
April 28, 1995
A White Paper submission to the Annenberg Center for Communication
Hayward R. Alker Shankar A. Rajamoney
McCone Professor, SIR Assistant Professor, CS
How should the international community respond to the next Somalia disaster, the next
Bosnia, the next Haitian crisis? In the post-Cold War era, these "new security
agenda" questions are especially troubling, because Cold War Great Power conflicts
have little to tell us about what should be done, and by whom. Yet considerable relevant
information on these kinds of conflicts already exists, much of it in computer-readable
formats; and the experience of international agencies in coping with such issues goes back
in many cases to the pre-Cold War period.
Using and improving upon such information, as well as the latest developments in computerized informational handling software engineering, we propose to develop a two-tier information system oriented toward exploring and recommending actions to be taken by international agencies responsible for international or transnational conflict management and prevention, such as the United Nations Security Council or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. These are two of the inter-governmental agencies with the long track records in coping with such cases, and much of what they have learned could be of value for other prevention or management oriented non-governmental agencies as well.
Although neither agency is headquartered in Paris, this work will complement and
parallel efforts by the Conflict Early Warning Systems Research Program (CEWS) of the
International Social Science Council (the ISSC) which is located in Paris. A creation of
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the ISSC is
a global, inter-disciplinary social science organization which has both educational and
research facilitating functions. A past President of the International Studies Association
and a past member of the ISSC Executive Committee, Professor Alker currently coordinates
the CEWS Research Program with Kumar Rupesinghe, the Secretary-General of International
Alert, a UN-recognized non-governmental organization especially interested in the
protection of group rights through the development of early warning systems useful for
forestalling genocidal conflicts and other humanly caused social disasters. The present
proposal complements that work.
Much of the reasoning in practical conflict research is based on precedential analysis, examining previous situations, drawing parallels, and adapting past solutions to current problems. In Artificial Intelligence (AI), case-based reasoning research has explored this style of problem solving. We propose to develop an AI system that will assist mediators, conflict managers and preventers find alternative solutions and hypothetically explore their potential consequences on the basis of historical precedents.
We propose to build an extensible prototype system with two interconnected parts:
1) a LISP-encoded, case-based reasoning system for computer-assisted explorations of several dozen past conflict cases, pointing toward syntheses of action recommendations for newer, emerging or hypothetical target situations; and
2) a Notebook hypertext information base containing larger textual and encoded information bases of potentially relevant past experience, as available from disclosable data bases, and on-line Internet information sites.
The interface connecting the two systems would allow selective transfer of new cases from the hypertext information component into the AI case-based reasoning subsystem for more intensive exploration purposes, although new codification of such information might be required.
The prototype will address many challenging problems that are currently on the cutting edge of AI and hypertext systems research, including reasoning from multiple cases, learning and discovery, integrating subcases, exploring alternative historical trajectories, and the reorganization of case histories.
We expect to have a demonstrable prototype by the end of the first year. In the second year of the project, more progress would be made in developing and coding new cases for use in the system, for developing software for codifying and recodifying cases within conceptual categories found to be more analytically discriminating, and in improving both the hypertext information component of the integrated system and the AI subsystem as well. Specific use of the "comparative case studies in conflict prevention" being developed by CEWS with support from the Carnegie Corporation is expected to be an important part of this effort. Documentation for use of the integrated system would also be developed.
A series of seminars would be scheduled in the fall for bringing to USC specialists in conflict management and prevention research, as well as case-based information systems development. They would be given demonstrations of the PARIS system, and be asked to advise its developers as to how it might be improved. An effort in the spring and summer of the second year would be made to develop, on a non-profit basis, a version of the intended system which could be distributed to research centers, inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations for their use and further exploration. Subsequent development of a scaled down, commercially marketed, classroom or "model UN" version will also then be explored.
Our effort intends to build on the recent acceptance of the use of advanced computer and communication technologies by international organizations in the conflict resolution area. We feel the inter-disciplinary competencies we bring to this study will produce a significant and useful technological product in this urgent area of concern to the international community.