Rahs: A better early warning system

Upgraded system will alert policymakers to impending global crises
Chua Hian Hou, Straits Times 14 Oct 08;

THE Government is planning a multimillion-dollar upgrade of a high-tech early warning system designed to help spot crises such as the current global financial meltdown.

Known as a risk assessment and horizon scanning (Rahs) system, it is designed to ferret out information about impending wars, epidemics, financial meltdowns and other geo-political issues from information sources including newspapers, online forums and blogs.

Sophisticated artificial intelligence programs then distil the data to see if it is important and if the issue is gaining momentum.

If it is, these Rahs systems will alert policymakers, so they can 'anticipate and manage potential changes', said Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security, Professor S. Jayakumar, the guest-of-honour at the second International Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (Rahs) symposium yesterday.

For instance, Rahs systems may detect a rise in online forum discussions about easy home loans accompanied by mortgage defaults - the genesis of the current financial turmoil; or reports about a rise in melamine sales to the milk industry, in tandem with complaints of kidney stones by parents of infants - and end up uncovering the China milk scandal.

In his opening address to the 300 participants of the two-day, closed-door event at Marina Mandarin hotel, Prof Jayakumar warned that the ongoing sub-prime mortgage crisis and food and energy shortages offered 'only a glimpse of the complexity and uncertainty the future has in store'.

Thus the need for such systems, so policymakers can collect and analyse the oft-missed 'weak signals and wild cards' that herald an impending crisis, and take steps to deal with them, he said.

Singapore's Rahs project, launched in 2005, is managed by the National Security Coordination Centre.

According to its website, the Government-wide network comprises '20 agencies covering strategic and operational counter-terrorism intelligence, environmental scanning and scenario planning, bio-medical surveillance, cyber surveillance, maritime security, chemical-biological-radiological-explosives surveillance, energy security and education'.

The American and British governments, too, have embarked on similar initiatives.

The Singapore Government is looking to upgrade its current Rahs system, said civil service head Peter Ho at a gala dinner last night.

This will, he said, allow the authorities to do 'deep Web harvesting, tracking blogs and forums, and sentiment analysis...along with other new capabilities'.

Deep Web harvesting refers to obtaining information from private websites that cannot be located via public search engines like Google. Sentiment analysis is used to detect bias in the author - for example, whether the writer is a closet-environmentalist or big-business lobbyist.

When completed, said Mr Ho, 'Rahs version 2.0' will be 'an important addition to the (Government's) larger strategic planning toolkit'.

The Straits Times understands that details of the project, which is expected to cost a few million dollars and be completed within a year of being awarded, should be unveiled next month on the Government tender website Gebiz.

Software company Radar Networks' chief executive officer Nova Spivack, one of the speakers at the event, said that such systems have, in the past, been sorely neglected in the 'geo-political area' despite their obvious value as an intelligence-gathering tool.

It will take five to 10 years, he said, before Rahs is mature enough to spot nasty surprises like the ongoing financial turmoil.

Local universities to help govt assess risks
Younger generation to learn strategic anticipation
Lee U-Wen, Today Online 14 Oct 08;

SINGAPORE'S three local universities have been roped in to help the country strengthen its ability to assess risks and anticipate events.

The outreach effort has already resulted in valuable feedback from students and academics on how the government can improve Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS), Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security S Jayakumar said yesterday.

Speaking at the start of a two-day international symposium, he said that the government wants to 'expose the younger generation to the importance of strategic anticipation and planning'.

Since last year, students at the Singapore Management University (SMU) have used the programme to analyse the supply chain for agricultural commodities. The National University of Singapore (NUS) has used it to study the Asian financial crisis. And Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is looking at possible scenarios relating to China, global food and multilateral security issues.

The government has learnt much in the past three years since it established RAHS, Prof Jayakumar said. '(It) is a natural part of a networked government, offering a whole-of-government approach to detecting and identifying early indicators of strategic issues, both threats as well as opportunities.'

He cited examples such as the Asian financial crisis, severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US that 'surprised' the world when they occurred. More recently, uncertainty has seeped in, thanks to fear of global warming, food shortages and the collapse of financial institutions.

'These issues offer us only a glimpse of the complexity and uncertainty the future has in store,' Prof Jayakumar said. 'It is important to have a coherent and systematic framework to anticipate and manage potential changes. However, it is not possible for us to have a crystal ball through which we can see the future, nor can we predict what strategic surprises lie ahead.'

What the government can do, he said, is to 'encourage a coordinated analysis of trends, weak signals and wild cards'.

At a dinner last night for the symposium participants, Head of Civil Service Peter Ho said that while uncertainty and unpredictability 'produce enormous challenges for governments, societies and nations', opportunities also abound.

'The key is how to identify black swans and wild cards, and then how to deal with their consequences, the wicked problems,' he said. 'We will use RAHS to help manage complexity and disruptive change.'

Diversity is vital in these efforts to reach out to as wide a community as possible, Mr Ho said.

'We should look at the potential value of establishing links to domain experts in academia, private sector and industry, and with our friends from abroad.'

This year's RAHS symposium, the second, is being attended by 300 security experts, academics, technologists and futurists from 25 countries.