Behavior and Events From News
The
Behavior and
Events from
News
coding scheme is used with Profiler Plus to generate event data from a English language
news feeds. In development since January 2008, BEN has been used successfully for
an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) project and a Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) project.
What is BEN?
The BEN coding scheme evolved from the Conflict and Mediation Event Observations
(CAMEO) coding scheme developed by the Penn State Data System Project. BEN was developed
to use the full text of documents to extract event information. Each extracted event
is assigned a 4-digit number that indicates the corresponding BEN category. Categories
are separated into overarching groups of conflict and cooperation, and further specified
within each.
Click here to see all BEN event categories.
Who, what, when, and where?
BEN began in an attempt to answer the question, “who did what, to whom?” That question
was expanded to include “when”, and most recently, “where”.
BEN uses SSA component schemes to identify actors, which includes lexicons of political
parties and leaders, terrorist groups, and ethnic minorities. Using this, BEN results
can be narrowed to search for specific groups or actors that may be of interest.
BEN also uses GeoNames, an open source location database, to identify the location
of BEN events. The GeoNames database identifies millions of locations worldwide,
and allows an in-depth view of event progression.
BEN can assist you with a variety of issues:
- Trend analysis – look at event data over time to spot trends in specific geographies
or specific events across geographies
- Prediction and planning support - Spot trends in build up of tension over time to
assist in prediction of potential unrest and allow for government response planning
- Geospatial analysis – BEN results can be linked to programs like Google Earth to
provide a geospatial view of event trends
Click here to see BEN in action
for the 2011-2012 Syrian uprising.