Lockheed's $1.3 million deal for crises software

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Advanced Technology Laboratories in Cherry Hill received a $1.3 million contract yesterday to develop computer software that helps military commanders anticipate crises that could turn violent.

The contract is for the first phase of a new system called "predicting stability through analyzing germane events," or PRESAGE. It was awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The Cherry Hill unit will spend the next 15 months integrating proven social-science models and evaluating data from military, economic, diplomatic and other sources.

"Being able to predict events with reasonable accuracy is the first step in constructing a decision-support system to aid in region stabilization," said Mark Hoffman, manager of the project at the Cherry Hill unit.

His unit will be working with scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the Universities of Kansas, Washington and Georgia. The team also includes Innovative Decisions Inc. and Evidence Based Research, both of Vienna, Va.; Interactive Data Visualization, of Lexington, S.C.; and Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Ill.

The Cherry Hill laboratories are among several Lockheed Martin units that together employ more than 12,000 people in the Philadelphia region.