Washington, Dec 11 (IANS) A software designed by researchers can detect hidden weapon caches and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used by terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan or Kashmir.
An IED is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action.

Computer experts Paulo Shakarian, V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland (U-M) and Maria-Luisa Sapino from University of Torino (Italy), developed the SCARE to help analysts locate caches of explosives.

SCARE (Spatio-Cultural Abductive Reasoning Engine) allows analysts to combine available inputs with this technique to identify the most probable locations of IED caches. Researchers vouched for the accuracy of SCARE.

“The SCARE software is not a stand-alone tool,” said Subrahmanian, who also is director of the U-M Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.

“Military commanders and intelligence analysts would use SCARE in conjunction with their own experience and knowledge of a region, and together with available intelligence to pinpoint likely cache locations,” he said,

“SCARE is designed to address a very real tactical problem our soldiers encounter on a regular basis,” said Shakarian, a captain enrolled in the US Army’s Advanced Civil Schooling program.

Subrahmanian and Shakarian ran through the SCARE program publically on the locations of IED attacks in Baghdad over a 21-month period, said an U-M release.

The locations of IED caches predicted by SCARE were then compared with actual locations of caches found in that region during that time. The predictions usually were within a half mile of actual locations.