May 23-24, 2007

Introduction
 

I

nformatics research has emerged as a key scientific discipline and applications domain supporting counterterrorism and homeland security’s missions of anticipation, interdiction, prevention, preparedness and response to terrorist acts.  ISI 2007 provides a forum for discussions among these vital communities: academic researchers (in information technologies, computer science, public policy, and social studies), local, state, and federal law enforcement and intelligence experts, and information technology industry consultants and practitioners.  Security informatics is a rapidly growing multidisciplinary area that crosscuts numerous disciplines, including computer science, information technology, engineering, public policy, medicine (medical informatics), biology (bioinformatics), social and behavioral sciences, political science, and modeling and analysis.  The combination of intelligence and security informatics strives to integrate computational social science, advanced information technologies and algorithms to support counterterrorism and homeland security policies, organizations and operations (both domestically and internationally).  Because of the conference’s location near major New York – New Jersey ports, one of its key themes is port security, where the term “port” is used here in its broad sense, namely, as a point of entry/exit for secure flows of people and cargo.  Other themes cover the components of effective counterterrorism, dynamic data analysis, and critical-infrastructure protection technologies.  This conference aims to foster the development and growth of a counterterrorism and homeland-security community by providing a forum and podium for diverse communities: academia, government (local, state, federal law enforcement, intelligence experts, etc.) and industry (consultants and practitioners etc.).  We solicit contribution of long or short papers, and proposals for panel discussions on both the science and the practice of intelligence and security informatics.  The conference proceedings will be published as an IEEE publication.  Several satellite conferences will also be held before ISI-2007.

The upcoming IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics 2007 (ISI 2007) will be held May 23-24, 2007,  in New Brunswick, New Jersey, at the Hyatt Hotel. There will also be two satellite conferences: The 2007 Conference on Interdisciplinary Studies in Information Privacy and Security. This conference will be held on May 22nd, 2007 from 9 a.m to 5 p.m. at the University Inn, Douglass Campus, Rutgers, New Brunswick. The second event is the NSF Workshop on Biosurveillance Systems and Case Studies, May 22, 2007, New Brunswick, New Jersey

The two previous symposia on ISI (ISI-2003, ISI-2004) were held in Tucson, Arizona; the third (ISI-2005) in Atlanta, Georgia; the fourth (ISI-2006) in San Diego, California. These meetings provided a stimulating intellectual forum for discussions among previously disparate communities: academic researchers (in information technologies, computer science, public policy, and social and behavioral studies), local, state, and federal law enforcement and intelligence experts, and information technology industry consultants and practitioners. Proceedings of these past ISI meetings were published in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).

ISI-2007 will continue this conference series under the sponsorship of the IEEE