Assessing the threat of firearms: new threat formula, resources, and ontological linking algorithms

The present work is part of an ongoing larger project.2,3,11, 12 The goal of this project is to develop a system capable of automatic threat assessment for instances of firearms use in public places. The main components of the system are: an ontology of firearms;1, 14 algorithms to create the visual footprint of the firearms,1,14 to compare visual information,2, 3' 11' 12 to facilitate search in the ontology, and to generate the links between the conceptual and visual ontologies; as well as a formula to calculate the threat of individual firearms, firearms classes, and ammunition types in different environments. One part of the dual-level ontology for the properties of the firearms captures key visual features used to identify their type or class in images, while the other part captures their threat-relevant conceptual properties. The visual ontology is the result of image segmentation and matching methods, while the conceptual ontology is designed using knowledge-engineering principles and populated semi-automatically from Web resources. The focus of the present paper is two-fold. On the one hand, we will report on an update of the initial threat formula, based on the substantially increased population of the firearm ontology, including ammunition types and comparisons to actual incidents, and allowing for an overall more accurate assessment. On the other hand, the linking algorithms between the visual and conceptual ontologies are elaborated for faster transfer of information leading to an improvement in accuracy of the threat assessment.