OUC's Participation in the 2011 INEX Book Track

In this article we describe the Oslo University College’s participation in the INEX 2011 Book track. In 2010, the OUC submitted retrieval results for the “Prove It” task with traditional relevance detection combined with some rudimental detection of confirmation. In line with our belief that proving or refuting facts are different semantic aware actions of speech, we have this year attempted to incorporate some rudimentary semantic support based on the WordNet database

Need and Misery in the Eastern Periphery: Nordic Sámi Media Debate on the Kola Sámi

ABSTRACT This article investigates Nordic Sámi discourse on the Kola (Russian) Sámi through analysis of texts from Sámi newspapers and journals 19922009. Among the findings are that that the relationship between Nordic and Kola Sámi is frequently discussed as a donor-recipient pattern similar to that of general Western discourse on the "global South" and the 1990s' "great misery discourse" on Russia. This portrayal of the Kola Sámi is here referred to as the "discourse of need". However, the study also finds that this most divergent subgroup of the Sámi people is accepted into the border-transcending Sámi nation without question. It is never challenged that they are part of a larger "us". The article also comments on some similarities between the "discourse on the Kola Sámi as a "suffering" group, and certain patterns in Nordic Sámi self-representation. In comparison, a selection of non-Sámi media texts displayed less interest in the Kola Sámi; their paying attention to the group was more dependent on its members being perceived as victims of crisis and/or injustice; and they articulated the discourse of need moren often. The two decades from which texts were drawn (1990s and 2000s) differed mainly by the latter period showing a general decrease in interest in the group; and by Sámi media being less dominated by the discourse of need, and containing more texts portraying the Kola Sámi as culturally and politically active

Examining the effect of task stage and topic knowledge on searcher interaction with a “digital bookstore”

This paper reports some results from the experiment of the 2010 INEX interactive track. The experiment was designed to let searchers simulate being at two distinct stages of a work task process. Data were also collected on the test participants' topic knowledge. We have performed statistical analysis of the collected data to study differences with respect to relevance judgments and use of different types of metadata, at the different stages and for users with high and low topic knowledge

Intelligence in United Nations Peace Operations : A case study of the All Sources Information Fusion Unit in MINUSMA

More than a decade ago, the United Nations established a model for integrated missions – organising all assets under one leadership function – in order to facilitate comprehensive and coordinated mission efforts. This model creates a considerable span of control, with relatively few decision-making nodes. In turn, it requires information and decision support to reach decision-makers at the different levels of the organisation in a timely manner. One of the organisational steps taken to support decision-making was the establishment of the Joint Mission Analysis Centre (JMAC) in 2005. The All Source Information Fusion Unit (ASIFU) – an additional reinforcement to mission analysis capacity – was launched in Mali as a pilot in 2014. The purpose of the ASIFU was to provide intelligence on operational levels below the JMAC. The ASIFU was an intelligence entity that was part of the military component, under the command and control of the Force Commander (FC). This report demonstrates that the development of an intelligence community in integrated UN peace operations faces many of the challenges that other similar organisations have experienced. These include compression of organisational levels (the blurring of the lines between strategic, operational and tactical levels), challenges in disseminating and sharing products, an exaggerated and unrealistic belief in the use of technical sensors, and organisational changes that do not yield the desired results. While ASIFU is a recent invention, the introduction of intelligence structures in the UN is not new. Chesterman argued that efficient use of intelligence is a potential success factor from the strategic UN headquarters level down to the tactical level in peace operations (2006). Conversely, Dorn showed as early as 1999 the limitations of intelligence in UN peacekeeping. Ten years later, he considered that many of the same challenges remained, although intelligence, especially human intelligence (HUMINT), had been successful in supporting strong UN operations in Haiti to stabilise the gang-dominated slum areas (Dorn, 2009). Cammaert (2003) provided detailed recommendations on how intelligence in UN operations might be improved. For instance, he stressed the importance of competence standards for intelligence personnel, the utilisation of all assets and personnel for information gathering, and the reliability and consistency of the intelligence system and products. Although intelligence at all levels of the UN appears fraught with challenges, a near unanimous assessment from the existent literature is that an intelligence function is required in UN peace operations. The UN has increasingly acknowledged the need for intelligence to provide support for decision-making. As with other organisations involved in peace and stabilisation efforts, the UN needs knowledge to improve force protection, the planning of operations and the implementation of mission mandates. Two UN reports in particular have established the need for more systematic and efficient processing of information to support decision-making in UN peace operations. The so-called Brahimi report (UN, 2000) called for the increased collection and analysis of information on the relevant actors in a given mission area. Further, it stated that the UN does not have a system to process information about conflict areas – a system which covers information collection, analysis and the dissemination or distribution of products. Although the concept of intelligence in the UN has developed considerably since then, the so-called HIPPO report from 2015 (High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations) still called for improved support systems to enable more responsive and accountable peace operations – in other words, the UN still needs better intelligence (UN, 2015b). So where does the UN stand in terms of effective operational intelligence? To begin to answer this overarching question, this report provides a case study of the cutting edge of UN intelligence in contemporary UN peace operations1 – the ASIFU. First deployed in May 2014, the ASIFU was set up to support operational level decision-making in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Comprising military personnel and military resources, the ASIFU was placed under the FC in MINUSMA’s organisational chart. The ASIFU is largely based on North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) intelligence doctrine, and is currently composed of personnel and resources from NATO member, or NATO-associated, states. The core aim is to provide an efficient intelligence organisation that enables MINUSMA to protect its forces and civilians under threat and to fulfil its mission mandate. First, the report explains the role and utility of ASIFU in MINUSMA. Second, it analyses the intelligence processes in the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), which does not have an ASIFU. This helps provide an understanding of whether an ASIFU could also be useful there. Finally, the report evaluates how MINUSMA and UNMISS use intelligence to support the implementation of the prioritised mission mandate – the protection of civilians (POC) – for both missions. Specifically, this report tries to answer three questions: 1. How has the ASIFU affected the intelligence cycle of MINUSMA? 2. How does the intelligence cycle function in UNMISS, in the absence of an ASIFU? 3. How do intelligence units support POC mandates in MINUSMA and UNMISS? Chapter 2 defines the central concepts and describes intelligence resources in UN peace operations. Chapter 3 introduces the analytical framework – the four-phased intelligence cycle. Chapter 4 analyses ASIFU in MINUSMA, whilst Chapter 5 investigates UNMISS in order to compare MINUSMA with a UN mission that does not have an ASIFU. Both these chapters provide conclusions on intelligence resources and processes and recommendations for improvement. Chapter 6 briefly investigates how MINUSMA and UNMISS use intelligence resources to support their top priority task of POC. Chapter 7 makes recommendations on how to increase the utility of intelligence in UN peace operations. The report largely builds on information received through semi-structured interviews with UN practitioners – civilian and military – in Mali and South Sudan in June 2016. All interviewees agreed to provide information as long as they could remain anonymous. In addition, the report builds on UN policies, guidelines and handbooks, as well as other relevant literature. Both authors have previous experience with intelligence in NATO operations, and Lindboe was involved in the original construction, implementation, and deployment of the ASIFU in MINUSMA

Search Transition as a Measure of Effort in Information Retrieval Interaction

In this article we introduce the concept of search transitions as a unit for measuring the effort invested by searchers in information retrieval interaction. The concept is discussed and compared to traditional measures of effort, such as time. To investigate the usability of the search transition measure we have performed an analysis of 149 logs in an IR system indexing a collection of 650.000 Wikipedia articles. Our findings show that search transitions correlate with other, more mechanistic, effort measures. Additional experiments are necessary to investigate if it is a better measure of effort than e.g. number of documents examined

Using ‘search transitions’ to study searchers investment of effort: experiences with client and server side logging

We are investigating the value of using the concept ‘search transition’ for studying effort invested in information search processes. In this paper we present findings from a comparative study of data collected from client and server side loggings. The purpose is to see what factors of effort can be captured from the two logging methods. The data stems from studies of searchers interaction with an XML information retrieval system. The searchers interaction was simultaneously logged by a screen capturing software and the IR systems logging facility. In order to identify the advantages and disadvantages we have compared the data gathered from a selection of sessions. We believe there is value in identifying the effort investment in a search process, both to evaluate the quality of the search system and to suggest areas of system intervention in the search process, if effort investment can be detected dynamicall

Seven years of INEX interactive retrieval experiments – lessons and challenges

This paper summarizes a major effort in interactive search investigation, the INEX i-track, a collective effort run over a seven-year period. We present the experimental conditions, report some of the findings of the participating groups, and examine the challenges posed by this kind of collective experimental effort

Movement patterns of golden eagles in relation to distribution of reindeer and sheep in Fennoscandia

Predator-livestock conflicts are a big problem worldwide, and usually result in big ethic and economic difficulties. Even though a lot of research has been done on the matter, there are still many uncertainties connected to the subject. For the golden eagle the main challenges are connected to the lack of information regarding territoriality, and how it affects depredation of livestock and both small- and large-scale movements. Territorial individuals, on the other hand, are believed to stay in their territory throughout the year without the ability to track resources over large spatial scales. Non-territorial individuals roam larger areas and are therefore believed to be the main tortfeasor on livestock, since they presumably are driven by food availability. My thesis is based on data from nine eagles, three territorial and six non-territorial individuals, that carried GPS transmitters in a harness on their backs. The data has been collected through the NINA project called “Loss of lambs to Golden Eagles on the Fosen Peninsula,” a five-year-long project investigating the role of golden eagles in the loss of domestic sheep as well as the eagles’ diet and movement behavior. Home range size was estimated for the breeding- and non-breeding season for the territorial eagles. Upon finding that territorial individuals largely stay within or close to their breeding territories throughout the year, I continued investigating if patch residency time for the non-territorial individuals was affected by presence of reindeer and sheep. This was done on three different radii: 1000, 5000 and 10 000 meters. I hypothesized that both prey species are attractive for young golden eagles and that patch residency time would increase in their presence. I found that two out of the three territorial individuals made small-scale movements during the non-breeding season. This could be explained by an abundance of prey at the location visited, as well as the need to recharge after an energy-demanding breeding period. For the non-territorial individuals, the patch residency analysis for all three radii revealed that the eagles tended to spend more time in patches with reindeer than without, but less time in patches with sheep present than without. An explanation could be a preference for reindeer over sheep. Reindeer is a prey type that can be found naturally in Norway, and therefore have been an available food source for a long period of time. Lastly, the results show large seasonal and individual variations in patch residency time. This could be explained by the fluctuations in the population of the eagles’ main prey species, hare, and ptarmigan. According to the alternative prey hypothesis, the depredation of livestock will increase when the access to the eagles’ main prey is low. This might explain the big monthly and yearly variations for each individual. My study indicates that non-territorial golden eagles stay longer in an area if reindeer are present. Based on these results, I see culling as an unsuitable management measure, mainly because the patch residency within a 10 000-meter radius is as low as approximately eight days, but also because of large individual and temporal variation, making this result hard to generalize. This thesis gives insight into the movement behavior of golden eagles and is relevant to future management, especially regarding the realism of catching the culprit doing the livestock damage. Going forward, it will be necessary to do more research on the subject to gather an even deeper understanding of movement behavior and motivations for the eagles, but also to move towards obtaining loss rates of reindeer and lambs in a range of study sites.M-N