Supported Pattern Development in Intelligence Analysis ∗

Intelligence professionals work with incomplete and noisy data. Their information needs are often hard to express, and almost impossible to get right the first time. This paper describes the GEM pattern language for encoding analysts’ information needs in graphical patterns, and its use in the Link Analysis Workbench (LAW) system to find inexact matches to those patterns in large relational data sets. The LAW user typically interacts with the system through a cycle in which the user (1) creates an initial GEM pattern corresponding to his information need, (2) uses the LAW matcher to retrieve a collection of matching episodes in the data, (3) revises the pattern based on the shortcomings of the matches, and (4) repeats the process until the revised pattern is returning the right data. The pattern language and the system are designed to facilitate the user in quickly traversing this cycle.