By Chua Hian Hou

THE Government is planning a multimillion-dollar upgrade of a high-tech early warning system designed to help spot crises such as the current global financial meltdown.

Known as a risk assessment and horizon scanning (Rahs) system, it is designed to ferret out information about impending wars, epidemics, financial meltdowns and other geo-political issues from information sources including newspapers, online forums and blogs.

Sophisticated artificial intelligence programs then distil the data to see if it is important and if the issue is gaining momentum.

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