By Ben Battafarano
NCITE Student Communications Assistant
Suspicious activity is rarely as obvious as a shadowy figure running across a rooftop, balaclava-clad, with a sack of cash slung over one shoulder. Think along the lines of someone unloading a large truck into their home every Saturday at 3 a.m. Not a crime – but odd.
The question then becomes: When should you report something like this? And how?
In 2021, experts at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education (NCITE) Center began developing chatbot technology to improve suspicious activity reporting. Led by NCITE researchers Joel Elson, Ph.D., and Erin Kearns, Ph.D., the chatbot is a program designed for utility and ease of use. It aims to solicit relevant and accurate information that enables authorities to better pursue reports of suspicious activity.
“The question is, how do we get people to buy into a system that they trust?” said Tin Nguyen, Ph.D., NCITE senior research associate and technology transition lead, who has overseen the commercialization of the chatbot. “Part of the goal of developing this chatbot is to get a technology out into the world that people feel safe reporting to in the comfort of their own headspace.”
On Oct. 6, NCITE filed a full patent for its chatbot technology through UNeMed, the technology transfer and commercialization office of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). With patent approval, NCITE would be able to license and tailor the technology to agencies and businesses in the public and private sectors.
Bringing the Chatbot to Market
Current reporting methods by phone or online static forms are clunky, said Nguyen. Human error causes vital information to be missed, and many people feel uncomfortable speaking verbally about someone’s suspicious behavior. Online forms ask overbroad questions (what happened?), require clicking through multiple pages, and sometimes route respondents toward categorization (burglary, assault), even though suspicious activity typically falls outside such obvious crimes.
NCITE’s chatbot creates a responsive, conversational experience for users, collecting more consistent and comprehensive information for authorities to analyze.
The patent application is the culmination of eight months of collaboration between NCITE researchers, technology transition staff, and Tyler Scherr, UNeMed’s licensing specialist.
While the patent filing was underway, NCITE also partnered with entrepreneurs from the FedTech Homeland Security Startup Studio, an accelerator that assists government partners in commercializing federally funded, mission-relevant inventions. The program pairs researchers and their inventions with early-experience entrepreneurs to identify and market applications for the inventions.
The question is, how do we get people to buy into a system that they trust?
The NCITE team discovered the program through Dana Saft, NCITE’s program manager at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of University Programs (OUP). After nominating the chatbot technology as a promising invention, the NCITE team was accepted into the Homeland Security Startup Studio by FedTech, which partners directly with the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) to bridge the gap from DHS-funded research and development of early-stage inventions to usable, real-world innovations.
“The goal now is not just to have a business plan, but to develop a sustainable business that results in the technology being used for the public good,” said Nguyen.
Eliminating Barriers to Reporting
The chatbot is the brainchild of Kearns, NCITE’s head of prevention research initiatives, and Elson, head of information science and technology research initiatives. Combining their expertise in criminology and human-to-computer trust, in 2021, the pair won a federal grant from the DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to examine barriers to threat reporting and develop technology to improve it.
People who witness suspicious activity often minimize it, Kearns said. They often think “‘it’s not a big deal, I don’t want to waste law enforcement’s time … I’m going to report this thing and Officer So-and-So is going to look at me like I’m an idiot.’”
“A chatbot can help to overcome some of these barriers that can’t really be overcome in other ways,” she said. “Without this technology, you can’t get past the fact that some people just don’t want to report to another human being.”
Elson and Kearns were drawn together by the similarity of their Ph.D. dissertations, which focused on people’s willingness to interact with technology and cooperate in counterterrorism reporting, respectively. They came up with the chatbot idea months before they officially started at NCITE in response to an inquiry from the Sarpy County Sheriff’s Office and Awareity, an Omaha-based company focused on threat assessment and prevention. Both organizations are now community partners on the research component of the project.
The team has also partnered with the RTI Innovation Advisors, a commercialization wing of the nonprofit Research Triangle Institute, to provide the initial market analysis of the chatbot to determine its potential for commercialization.
Working Toward a ‘Moonshot’ Goal
The FedTech accelerator has a two-stage process. In Phase 1, teams build an understanding of their inventions and viable markets for commercializing them. Starting in March, the NCITE team and the entrepreneurs attended weekly meetings to develop the chatbot’s selling points and practice pitching the technology.
Then, the entrepreneurs progressed to Phase 2: the business plan and pitch development process. In July, the entrepreneurs delivered their pitches in Washington, D.C., to an audience of investors and DHS and community stakeholders, gauging their interest and adapting to their feedback.
“It was a great experience there,” said Nguyen. “We learned a lot about the breadth of the technologies and inventions that DHS can pass their hands in.”
NCITE was paired with two primary entrepreneurs who worked on the chatbot through the Homeland Security Startup Studio. Lisa London and Scott Lawler both work for companies that partner with the federal government. London is the CEO of Edifice Solutions, a design-build construction firm, and Lawler is the CEO of LP3, a cybersecurity company.
