Enabling technology for Collaborative Semantic Search (CSS)

Intelligence analysts are slowly drowning in a flood of human and computer-generated information. Modern semantic search engines such as KBSI´s Collaborative Semantic Search (CSS) technology application may provide significant leverage to address this problem by empowering analysts to express their information needs. Because analysts seldom work in isolation, a shared understanding of analysis goals and subsequent sharing of knowledge and effort can significantly improve analytic outcomes. In this paper, we describe our efforts in adding collaboration capabilities into our CSS technology application. We describe the small internal user study that was carried out to better understand the requirements of collaboration during search. These requirements led to the design and implementation of specific enhancements to our existing search application to support such collaboration. The resulting CSS technology supports the ability to document and share search objectives and results, and to automatically identify users with similar objectives.