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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.