IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013 - 63

Feedback: In appropriate
political circumstances, accolades and appropriate publicity4 should be showered upon
individuals who make important contributions.
9) Cohesive and competent team:
The Galaxy Zoo was a close
collaboration between computer-adept academics, information technology (IT) and web
experts, and individuals with
subject domain expertise.
One possible approach to
greatly expanding PTM image
analysis would be to implement a
scheme that identifies numerous
regions of interest on the surface of
the Earth, and then assigns a set of
participants a well-defined task for
each region. One group might be
assigned the task of using successive satellite images to characterize and track any new construction
projects in a country of interest or
concern, by first using computerized change detection between
images taken at different times to
identify (but not to automatically
characterize) construction sites.
Another group might be assigned
the task of looking at multiband
images of a tropical forest, monitoring deforestation and land use.
what's currently lacking is
a large scale public engagement
(ideally with international public
participation in the hundreds of
thousands) through a supervised
framework that identifies verification problems of interest. These
then need to be connected with
interested members of the public with the appropriate subset of
archived and incoming image data,
under dedicated expert oversight of
the overall process, with a robust
method that detects and suppresses
attempts to "game the system".
we therefore consider the facilitation of public access to relevant

8)

images as an area where a coordinated effort by the academic and/or
NGO sectors, with a modest investment in software and personnel, could
yield substantial near term dividends.
The IT technology and the data both
exist already, and other projects have
shown impressive results in projects
that are very analogous to the PTM
treaty verification.

Next Steps
The discussion above illustrates
some of the significant challenges
PTM faces that will determine the
extent to which, and the pace at
which, PTM will make progress. we
outline below some initial thoughts
on next steps that might enable a substantial increase in Public Technical
Means being applied to the verification of compliance with international
agreements.5 These suggestions are
roughly organized by system layer,
from sensor hardware at the innermost level to the public policy interface at the outermost level.

PTM Sensor Layer
Existing sensors have a range of
capabilities that are relevant to
verification, but the development
of cheap, reliable PTM verification
devices (seismic, trace gas analysis,
CO2 sensors...) that have the requisite accuracy and precision is an
area for further development. This
seems an area where academia
could work in partnership with
government, industry, NGOs, and
international agencies to identify
both opportunities and needs and
work towards the implementation
of new capabilities.

PTM Software
Many engineering schools use
smartphone programming to introduce their students to the basic
principles of computer science.
6

5

An example of what was very extensive press
coverage was the Economist story "Stars in their
eyes: An armchair astronomer discovers something very odd" [13].

Members of the scientific and engineering communities with a potential interest in addressing
technical verification issues might wish to consult the State Department web site http://www.
state.gov/t/avc/vtt/c45207.htm for fellowship and
funding opportunities.

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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wINTEr 2013

This seems a good opportunity to
build some prototype smartphone
verification apps and (at a more
advanced level) to explore the
areas of user interfaces and user
feedback.

PTM Communications Layer
Some data validation and verification challenges are specific to
the PTM concept. In particular,
the issues of retribution-free data
exchange mechanisms and robust
data integrity protocols need further work and experimentation
by the computer science community. we also think the notion of
a PTM data relay satellite merits
consideration.

PTM Data Distribution Layer
A number of groups have undertaken
the analysis of commercial satellite
images for PTM purposes, and these
efforts certainly warrant further
development and refinement. There
is also at least one example, hosted
by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), of an access portal
where PTM images are made accessible to the public in a structured way.
These efforts are all moving towards
the objective of PTM image analysis,
and a thoughtful assessment of these
initial forays could identify best practices for additional implementations
or for the evolution of the existing
programs.

PTM Analysis and Data
Fusion Layers
The distributed sensing community
is wrestling with the difficult problem of extracting knowledge and
understanding from the noisy and
cluttered data that are generated by
wide arrays of inexpensive sensors.
we advocate establishing stronger
linkages between the verification
community and this rapidly evolving subdiscipline of engineering.
Carrying out some informative
PTM exploratory projects in areas
where the public is likely to be supportive and where appropriate technology has been widely adopted
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013
