2025: 미확인 이상 현상(UAP) 워크숍 보고서

White Paper: 2025 UAP Workshop - Narrative Data, Infrastructures, and Analysis

2025 UAP Workshop:
Narrative Data, Infrastructures, and Analysis
Workshop Synthesis and Recommendations
August 5-6, 2025
Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI)
Workshop sponsored by:
All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)
26-P-0344

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 2
Introduction and Purpose ................................................................................................................ 3
About the Workshop ....................................................................................................................... 3
Establishing open dialogue ......................................................................................................... 4
Workshop Summary ....................................................................................................................... 4
Agenda overview ........................................................................................................................ 4
Breakout Discussion Summaries ................................................................................................ 5
Breakout Session #1: Identifying, accessing, and integrating data sources [DAY 1] ............ 5
Breakout Session #2: Pathways for data analysis and interpretation at scale [DAY 1] ......... 5
Breakout Session #3: Cleaning, organizing, and linking data: What can and should be done?
[DAY 2] .................................................................................................................................. 5
Outcomes and Recommendations ................................................................................................... 7
Synthesis of Findings .................................................................................................................. 7
Relevant data types and sources of UAP narrative reports ..................................................... 7
Barriers and challenges in data collection and use ................................................................. 7
Metadata and context for usability and analysis ..................................................................... 8
Linking data sources and developing a unified approach ....................................................... 8
Assessing credibility and quality of reports ............................................................................ 8
AI and analytical methods ...................................................................................................... 9
Forward-looking strategy and key considerations .................................................................. 9
Recommended actionable next steps ........................................................................................ 10
Appendix A: Invitation Letter ....................................................................................................... 11
Appendix B: Guidelines for Conduct ........................................................................................... 13
Appendix C: Workshop Agenda ................................................................................................... 14
Appendix D: Breakout Session Prompts....................................................................................... 15

Executive Summary
From both government and scientific perspectives, advancing Unidentified Anomalous
Phenomena (UAP) research requires rigorous data collection, standardization, and analysis.
Most UAP reports are fragmented, sparse, and unstructured, ranging from military logs and pilot
reports to archival records, social media posts, and civilian testimony. Interpreting this
heterogeneous data at scale is complicated by barriers of classification, translation, and retention.
At the same time, UAP reports also present opportunities for novel methods of integration,
metadata design, and analysis. The 2025 UAP Workshop on Narrative Data, Infrastructures, and
Analysis brought together 40 participants from government, academia, and independent research
organizations. The meeting focused specifically on the challenges and opportunities of working
with UAP narrative reports and related data sources.
Workshop discussions highlighted several cross-cutting findings. First, effective progress
requires clear standards and common reporting templates, with robust metadata capturing time,
location, provenance, morphology, and contextual details. Second, linking across datasets –
military and civilian, to include archival, environmental, and technical - must balance
interoperability with privacy, ethical, and classification constraints. Third, credibility is best
assessed through corroboration, but for efficiency there is a need for automated methods to filter
reports and surface the most promising for investigation. Fourth, AI and machine learning tools
offer capacity for transcription, triage, clustering, and semantic search, but they must be
deployed cautiously to avoid hallucination, bias, and amplification of hoaxes. Human oversight
and iterative workflows remain essential. Finally, the workshop underscored the importance of
community engagement and trust-building, encouraging the scientific community to cultivate a
sustainable “community of practice” for UAP research with further work and convenings.
This report concludes with recommended actionable next steps to establish metadata templates;
combine human expertise with AI tools; leverage existing tools and infrastructures; support
triage with awareness of bias; convene community members; facilitate qualitative integration in
investigation, such as interviews; prioritize collection of new high-quality reports while
integrating historical data; and improve reporting interfaces to enhance accessibility,
collaboration, and transparency. Together, these findings and recommendations point toward a
multi-disciplinary and community-engaged approach to UAP narrative data, which may
influence how and where technical sensors are deployed.
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Introduction and Purpose
Understanding the nature of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) has emerged in recent
years as a pressing area of inquiry in need of rigorous scientific approaches, as well as cross-
disciplinary, cross-sector and international collaboration. Analyzing reports of UAP related
sightings and experiences presents unique challenges due to the large-scale, heterogeneous, and
qualitative nature of the reports originating from military and civilian sources. These reports
typically lack standardized metadata, making comparative analysis difficult. Additionally, the
integration of UAP reports from disparate sources—such as military databases, online reporting
systems, digital and digitized archival records, and social media—poses significant challenges
for harmonization and verification of data and construction of evidence. The complexity of these
datasets requires innovative data infrastructure solutions to enhance reliability, accessibility, and
interoperability. The workshop explored these challenges and sought strategies to improve UAP
data standardization, integration, and analytical approaches.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning present both opportunities to
address challenges, along with potential hazards. Tools such as Large Language Models (LLMs)
can assist with transcription, clustering, and pattern detection at scale, but they risk introducing
bias and hallucination. Responsible use of AI to help organize, analyze, and integrate UAP
reports at scale requires evaluation, human oversight, and shared frameworks for interpretation,
alongside new models to ensure transparency and trust across diverse research communities.
Therefore, the overall purpose of the workshop was to gather perspectives from the broader
scientific community and advance the science of UAP.
About the Workshop
The workshop centered on the collection, organization, and interpretation of UAP reports, with
attention to the challenges and opportunities of working with narrative data. The primary
objectives established for the workshop were to:
• Assess the current landscape of UAP reporting systems and data repositories;
• Identify key challenges and gaps in UAP data collection, standardization, and
accessibility;
• Explore methodologies for data analysis and pattern recognition in UAP reports;
• Nurture trust and collaboration between researchers, government agencies, and civilian
organizations; and
• Propose recommendations for developing a robust UAP data infrastructure.
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Outside participation was limited due to budget constraints and institutional capacity. Potential
participants were identified based on demonstrated expertise in one or more of the following
areas: AI and machine learning; UAP research and data; physical and natural sciences;
information and data science; archives and records; analysis methods; cyberinfrastructure and
computation; and human and social sciences.
If an invitee declined to attend, we extended an invitation to another candidate with similar
skills/experience identified through online research and word of mouth. The final workshop
included 40 participants.
Establishing open dialogue
Participant privacy was an important consideration throughout workshop planning, and
Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval governed data collection and security for the
workshop. The organizing committee further wished to establish a neutral environment in which
participants holding diverse beliefs and backgrounds would feel comfortable engaging. It was
very important that those attending the workshop felt comfortable sharing their thoughts and
ideas without being concerned about what others might say or do. The planning committee also
decided not to publicize the workshop online beforehand to limit outside attention and encourage
comfort and open discourse among an intimate group of participants. Participants were urged to
avoid taking photos or attributing statements to individuals without permission. The organizers
made efforts to accommodate privacy concerns after they identified a final list of attendees. This
included:
● Name tag options: individuals could simply list their first name with no institutional
affiliation;
● Individuals could choose to remove themselves from some sessions or conversations if
they felt uncomfortable engaging in various topics;
● Photographing other attendees was not permitted unless an attendee received consent
from all individuals who appeared in a photo; and
● Respect for all and approaching conversations with an open mind was a requirement for
participation. If an individual did not feel this was possible, they were asked to not attend.
See email communication sent to all attendees in Appendix B: Guidelines for Conduct.
Workshop Summary
Agenda overview
The event began with a casual, pre-workshop networking social in the evening of August 4,
2025. The organizers provided welcome and opening remarks on the morning of August 5,
2025. Brief participant introductions followed these remarks. A keynote address about the
importance of good UAP data primed participants for the first breakout session (“Identifying,
accessing, and integrating data sources”), held before breaking for lunch. The afternoon of
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August 5, 2025 began with a plenary talk, followed by the first panel discussion, “Opportunities
and challenges with AI”, and a second breakout session (“Pathways for data analysis and
interpretation at scale”). Day 1 concluded with a brief whole group discussion. A workshop
dinner was held at a restaurant near the workshop venue. Day 2 began with a second plenary talk
and second panel discussion, “Harmonizing qualitative and quantitative perspectives on narrative
data.” After lunch, a series of lightning talks were delivered by participants ahead of the final
breakout session (“Cleaning, organizing and linking data: What can and should be done?”).
Throughout the event, the organizing team collected notes that were later transcribed and
anonymized. For each breakout session, moderators collected records, and notetakers were
assigned to further ensure a robust record of the workshop proceedings.
Breakout Discussion Summaries
Prompts for each breakout session are included in Appendix D: Breakout Session Prompts.
Breakout Session #1: Identifying, accessing, and integrating data sources [DAY 1]
The first breakout session addressed central challenges of UAP research. Discussions revealed
the scope of the UAP data landscape as a patchwork of historical case files, contemporary
narrative reports, sensor-based data (radar, imagery, flight data), and environmental or contextual
datasets (weather, astronomical, seismological). Participants expressed enthusiasm for the
potential to link these disparate sources, but they also acknowledged the barriers posed by
inconsistency in metadata, classification restrictions, missing or inaccessible records, and stigma
around UAP reporting. Despite these challenges, groups converged on the outlook that with clear
standards, prototype integration projects, and intentional collaboration across organizations, it is
possible to create interoperable and sharable datasets that would enable more rigorous and
scalable analysis of UAP reports.
Breakout Session #2: Pathways for data analysis and interpretation at scale [DAY 1]
The second breakout session explored methods and limitations for analyzing UAP narrative data.
Across groups, participants grappled with the tension between extracting operationally useful
signals and respecting the experiential, cultural, and historical richness embedded in reports.
Overall, groups agreed that UAP narratives cannot be reduced to a single analytic approach.
Corpus-level methods (time/space clustering, keyword trends, statistical correlation, graph
analysis) are useful for pattern detection and hypothesis generation, while narrative/experiential
methods (phenomenology, discourse analysis) are useful for preserving meaning, cultural
context, and witness voices. Infrastructures should allow these modes to coexist.
Breakout Session #3: Cleaning, organizing, and linking data: What can and should be
done? [DAY 2]
The third and final breakout activity analyzed the structure of a hypothetical online reporting
form that has collected 1,000 UAP reports stored as PDF files to identify possibilities for data
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analysis with the data collected, as well as potential improvement of the form. The discussion led
to the following overarching suggestions that are broadly informative for online UAP reporting
tools.
1.Intake flow and structure:
• Begin with a free-text box (and optional audio upload) where the witness provides their
account in their own words. Use AI-assisted extraction to propose structured fields,
which the witness can then confirm or correct.
• Frame questions around what was pe