Applying Semantic Technologies, Policy Frameworks, and

Dissemination Services to Support Information Gathering and Sharing

Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Matthew Johnson, Maggie Breedy, Larry Bunch, Paul

Feltovich, James Lott, and Niranjan Suri{jbradshaw, mjohnson, lbunch, pfeltovich, jlott,

nsuri}@ihmc.us

Thanks to…

• Clifford Young• Guenther Kress• Raymond McGowan• Mark Thomas

Background Studies

• P. Feltovich, et al., Policy and Social Barriers to New Military Information Technologies

• S. Bockman, et al., An Empirical Study of Barriers to Information Sharing

• M. Johnson, et al., Applying Semantic Technologies…– In collaboration with Eric Heilman, Joe

Bernard, and Eric Roles

Messages• Many interesting devices and applications to aid

in the collection and sharing of ASCOPE information are appearing

• Challenges outlined yesterday show that, in addition, more attention needs to be focused on making the information and networks “smarter”– Semantic technologies to quickly standardize and

“tag” the information– Advanced policy frameworks to increase the

relevance of the information shared– Dissemination services to overcome problems of

limited bandwidth and intermittent connectivity

Challenges Mentioned

Problems• Multiple users creating

entities for the same event; no standard for entity classification

• Limited customization of visualizations and analytics

• Wasting bandwidth with irrelevant information

• No way to control information sharing

Approach• Semantic technologies

(OWL ontologies) to aid in classification and reduce duplication

• Runtime extensibility of OWL ontologies and software components

• Policy-governed information exchange

• Policy-based information scoping

Challenges Mentioned

Problems• Inadequate metrics on

effectiveness of information sharing

• Departures on short notice; useful information not available until “outside the wire”

• Spread out forces and frequent disconnection

Approach• Semantic “tagging” allows

aggregation of data for meaningful metrics

• Dissemination services, combined with policy, to prioritize information sharing

• Dissemination services to support opportunistic data harvesting

Information Gathering and Sharing Demonstration

• Based on our previous studies and interaction with soldiers• Information and network “smarts,” not devices or applications• Mature, flexible, pluggable, scalable, extensible architecture

Outside the wire

Inside the wire

EnvisionedMulti-System

Adapter

TiGR

reporting

US ForcesTiGR,

Other Remote Clients

KAoS/DisService

collecting

US UAVKAoS/DisService

harvesting

collecting

collecting

sharing sharing

US UAVKAoS/DisServicereporting

normal connectivity boundary

CPOF Others…

SIPRNET

US ForcesTiGR,

Other Remote Clients

KAoS/DisService

US ForcesTiGR,

Other Remote Clients

KAoS/DisService

UK ForcesTiGR,

Other Remote Clients

KAoS/DisService

Conceptual Architecture