DIMACS
DIMACS REU 2019

General Information

me
Student: Christopher Lugo
Office: CoRE 448
School: New Jersey City University
Majors: Computer Science & National Security
E-mail: clugo1@njcu.edu
Project: Protecting Vulnerable Communitites from Targeted Violence and Mass Casulaty Attacks

Project Description

Student researchers will assist in updating this guide by employing quantitative analysis to assess the levels of preparedness and resilience demonstrated by houses of worship and vulnerable communities. Students will analyze social media and other components to further understand the relationships and networks between vulnerable communities, law enforcement, the public and the private sector in protecting communities and preventing incidents.

Weekly Log

Week 1:
I went through the Google Drive folders we were allowed access to. Learned about the R.E.S.I.L.I.E.N.C.E Model. Met with my mentors and had a follow up phone conference call. I coded two transcripts. Started researching the Christchurch attacks that happened March 15, 2019.
Week 2:
Continue my research on the Christchurch attacks to create a case study. Then relate that case with the R.E.S.I.L.I.E.N.C.E. Model. I'm attending the IC CAE Critical Technology Studies Certificate program in which I get the privlege to meet individuals who work in the Intelligence Community and learn from them. I also spent time making some graphs and charts to help give a visual to our data.
Week 3:
This week my coworkers and I went to Alantic City to attend the "Bulding Resilience in the New Threat Paradigm: Targered Violence Against People of Faith" Conference held at Stockton University in partnership with Rutgers Center for Crticial Intelligence Studies and the Rutgers Miller Center for Community Protection and Reilience. The conference was two days long, from June 11th to June 12th. There were many presentations in relations to protecting vulnerable communities from vulerable attacks and we also had a table top excerside at a church in Alantic City. We discussed some of the best practices for houses of worship and what needs to be done to keep them safer. After the conference me and my coworkers made a summary for everything that happened at the conference and a summary for everything that happened at the IC Certiticate program. We proceed to pull out the best practices we heard during the convention made a list of them.
Week 4:
In the beginning of the week we had the privlege of touring the Nokia Bell Labs. We got to sit in on presentations related to the future of techology with topics such as: 5G, Compressed Sensing, and Quantified Understanding of Syria Refugee intergrations in Turkey. We then got to enter one of the world's most quietest rooms at the Bell Labs and another sound proof room called the Anti Chamber. During the week I worked on documentation for the pillars of the R.E.S.I.L.I.E.N.C.E. Model. I wrote the draft for the first pillar: "Resilience: Roles and Responsbilibites". I described what the pillar really stood for and explinaed why it matters to the model and matters in terms of protction as a whole. I added some visual aids to the document and explained what could be done to use this pillar to increase one's security.
Week 5:
This week I'm continuing the work on the documention of the pillars. The pillar I'm writing a draft for this time is the eight pillar: "Neutralize Negative Mindsets". There was also a siminar by Jie Gao about Network Algorithms in an Increasingly Connected World. She discussed with us her work location and trajectory data as how it can be used reveal a ton of information about people. My CoWorkers and I have also been looking into qualtiative software to dive deeper into the data next week. We have compiled a list of software and have a Top 4 software that would most likely be the most useful of the bunch. Our top 4 were: NVivo, Dedose, Dove Tail, and Quirkos.
Week 6:
During This week my coworkers and I all picked a software from the top 4 of the software list we created last week. I picked Dove Tail to test ans started the free trail. Dove Tail luckly required no real software installation and could run on a regular web browser such as firefox or google chrome. Since I was testing the application I had to check out all the features but I focused solely on getting data onto the application to test out. I uploaded interviews we had and went about re-coding them with Dove Tail.
Week 7:
This week was dedicated to the continuation of software testing. My coworkers and I were continuing our efforts in our software test and I finished uploading the interviews and re-coding them using Dove Tail. It took some time but after that I was able to start messing around with the features of Dove Tail. There was a data visualization feature that involved showing the data of the interviews I re-coded into a bar graph, radar plot, tree map, and pie graph. It had other metrics to measure as well such as volume of text, mentions, and highlights. I made sure to include all this in my review of the software. I believe Dove Tail is a good software to use for coding but was very limited on data visualization and didn't really offer anything new or different then other softwares could offer. I made my review of Dove Tail and a collaborative review of all our software with my co-workers. Afterwards my co-workers and I made our final presentaion for the research program describing our efforts over the past few weeks.
Week 8:
This week has been devoted solely to writing the research paper with my co-workers. We submitted all other work asked of us thus far and we are waiting on feedback from our mentors. Other than than I have also started my paper about the research program as a whole and my take on it.
Week 9:
For the remainder of the research program I am researching on other software, NVivo. I am to see what uses it may provide espically in terms of data visualizations. Other than that my coworkers and I are finalizing our papers and cleaning our dorms to get ready to go back home. This whole program has been quite the exprience with much to learn from and many memories created. Thank you to everyone at DIMACS, my coworkers, my mentors, the DIA grant that has made all of this possible, and whomever is reading this, thank you for your time in reading this.

Presentations

Additional Work

Additional Information

Acknowledgements:

This work was carried out while the author was a Rutgers IC CAE Research Fellow, supported through the DIA grant for Intelligence Community Centers for Academic Excellence – Critical Technology Studies Program.