A research project aimed at unraveling terrorist plots by exploiting a powerful technique called visual information analysis will be established at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.

The work will begin with a $2.5 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security, which is to be announced in Richland today.

But that is only the beginning of what PNNL's Jim Thomas expects will be a long-term relationship with Homeland Security that will be worth many millions of dollars.

"We've got about 75 people now working on this technology, and I expect to double that number in two years," said Thomas, a lab fellow who will be director of the new National Visual Analytics Center.

"This won't happen overnight, but (Homeland Security) is willing to make the major investment," Thomas said. "There are substantial investments coming to the Tri-Cities, and it's because we have a unique capability here."

The field of visual information takes today's chaotic flood of words, numbers or other kinds of data and mathematically converts the information into visual formats for easier study and manipulation using sophisticated computerized analyses.

"Being able to collect, combine and analyze vast amounts of information plays an ever-increasing role in preventing terrorist attacks," said Charles McQueary, the department's undersecretary for science and technology.

"There is so much information flow today, it's off the scale," Thomas said. "Nobody can possibly process it all. What we've been trying to do is see if we can develop an entirely new paradigm for dealing with all this information."

Thomas said the lab has been working for more than 10 years to develop the technology. The most recent generation of achievements in visual information analysis has been "wildly successful," Thomas said. "To the point to where people see the potential for the third generation."

Here is how the technique might work:

Imagine two terrorist groups, one in Seattle and the other in suburban Chicago, hatching a plan to blow up the Space Needle. They converse infrequently - sometimes by telephone, sometimes by e-mail - disguising their intentions with mundane chatter about business, their families or the weather.

But in these conversations are a few key code words often associated with specific individuals, locations or activities. They are impossible to find by reading the text. But presented visually, with visual links and associations, a pattern often emerges.

"We want to be able to both detect the expected and discover the unexpected," Thomas said. Because about half the human brain is devoted to visual processing, he said, the idea is to use our intuitive and still somewhat mysterious talent for pattern recognition - or for noticing subtle anomalies within a pattern or visual display - to flag possible areas of interest.

"The mind can see things that aren't there," Thomas said. "It doesn't process in a linear fashion but rather operates in an interactive way within what I'd call an information space. People deal with information not as a linear database but as n-dimensional space."

Thomas said the technology enables the mind to discover the linkages.

The charter with Homeland Security presents a bright future for the Richland lab, Thomas said.

"We're announcing the national center now, then next year we'll have regional centers, at universities around the country. We have to develop an educated work force," he said.

Homeland Security wants the lab to work with the universities and help invent the technology, Thomas said.

"That's a marvelous thing for the Tri-Cities. We'll have a regular flow of faculty and students coming to PNNL.

"We're clearly the U.S. leaders, if not the world leaders, of where this is going," Thomas said. In addition to government and military uses, there are lots of unclassified applications.

One such is Omniviz, in Maynard, Mass. - a company that uses the visual analytic techniques developed by Thomas and his colleagues in Richland to more easily study the complex relationships between genes, proteins and human metabolism to search for drug targets.

"Another is Dow Chemical, which uses this for competitive intelligence," he said. Thomas said the chemical giant employs visual information analysts who use the technique to sift through all the scientific publications, press releases, patent applications and even popular media (including digital analysis of images) to figure out what their competitors are up to.

"And it's not always about finding something that's happening," Thomas said. "Sometimes it can be just as revealing when you notice something that isn't happening - a notable lack of activity or discussion."

Thomas said the combination of increasingly powerful computing, new information technologies and better insight into the human mind are fueling an explosion of interest in the field. The Richland lab's technology already is being used by the intelligence community, he said, "and I know for a fact that it has saved lives."