ICEWS was a DARPA program conceived and led by Dr. Sean P. O'Brien that launched in 2008. In March 2010, O'Brien authored an article that compared ICEWS with past efforts in the realm, including systems designed by
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. According to the paper, the first of three phases of the ICEWS involved a competition between different groups to successfully predict events of interest based on historical data. The winning team,
Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, combined six different conflict modeling systems, including
agent-based models such as Barry Silverman's Factionalism and
Ian Lustick's
Political Science-Identity (PSI) computational modeling platforms,
logistic regression models such as those developed by
Philip A. Schrodt and the Bayesian statistics model used by
Steve Shellman, and geo-spatial network models built by
Michael D. Ward. The ICEWS data and model are currently maintained by
Lockheed Martin and undergoing operational test and evaluation by the
United States Southern Command and
United States Pacific Command. ==Reception==