Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) Study Group Final Report

Interoperability across Modeling and Simulation (M&S) and Command and Control (C2) systems continues to be a significant problem for today\u27s warfighters. M&S is well-established in military training, but it can be a valuable asset for planning and mission rehearsal if M&S and C2 systems were able to exchange information, plans, and orders more effectively. To better support the warfighter with M&S based capabilities, an open standards-based framework is needed that establishes operational and technical coherence between C2 and M&S systems

Using Simulation Systems for Decision Support

This chapter describes the use of simulation systems for decision support in support of real operations, which is the most challenging application domain in the discipline of modeling and simulation. To this end, the systems must be integrated as services into the operational infrastructure. To support discovery, selection, and composition of services, they need to be annotated regarding technical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, dynamic, and conceptual categories. The systems themselves must be complete and validated. The data must be obtainable, preferably via common protocols shared with the operational infrastructure. Agents and automated forces must produce situation adequate behavior. If these requirements for simulation systems and their annotations are fulfilled, decision support simulation can contribute significantly to the situational awareness up to cognitive levels of the decision maker

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

Report of the user requirements and web based access for eResearch workshops

The User Requirements and Web Based Access for eResearch Workshop, organized jointly by NeSC and NCeSS, was held on 19 May 2006. The aim was to identify lessons learned from e-Science projects that would contribute to our capacity to make Grid infrastructures and tools usable and accessible for diverse user communities. Its focus was on providing an opportunity for a pragmatic discussion between e-Science end users and tool builders in order to understand usability challenges, technological options, community-specific content and needs, and methodologies for design and development. We invited members of six UK e-Science projects and one US project, trying as far as possible to pair a user and developer from each project in order to discuss their contrasting perspectives and experiences. Three breakout group sessions covered the topics of user-developer relations, commodification, and functionality. There was also extensive post-meeting discussion, summarized here. Additional information on the workshop, including the agenda, participant list, and talk slides, can be found online at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/685/ Reference: NeSC report UKeS-2006-07 available from http://www.nesc.ac.uk/technical_papers/UKeS-2006-07.pd

JSB Composability and Web Services Interoperability Via Extensible Modeling & Simulation Framework (XMSF), Model Driven Architecture (MDA), Component Repositories, and Web-based Visualization

Study Report prepared for the U. S. Air Force, Joint Synthetic Battlespace Analysis of Technical Approaches (ATA) Studies & Prototyping Overview: This paper summarizes research work conducted by organizations concerned with interoperable distributed information technology (IT) applications, in particular the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and Old Dominion University (ODU). Although the application focus is distributed modeling & simulation (M&S) the results and findings are in general easily applicable to other distributed concepts as well, in particular the support of operations by M&S applications, such as distributed mission operations. The core idea of this work is to show the necessity of applying open standards for component description, implementation, and integration accompanied by aligned management processes and procedures to enable continuous interoperability for legacy and new M&S components of the live, virtual, and constructive domain within the USAF Joint Synthetic Battlespace (JSB). JSB will be a common integration framework capable of supporting the future emerging simulation needs ranging from training and battlefield rehearsal to research, system development and acquisition in alignment with other operational requirements, such as integration of command and control, support of operations, integration of training ranges comprising real systems, etc. To this end, the study describes multiple complementary Integrated Architecture Framework approaches and shows, how the various parts must be orchestrated in order to support the vision of JSB effectively and efficiently. Topics of direct relevance include Web Services via Extensible Modeling & Simulation Framework (XMSF), the Object Management Group (OMG)’s Model Driven Architecture (MDA), XML-based resource repositories, and Web-based X3D visualization. To this end, the report shows how JSB can − Utilize Web Services throughout all components via XMSF methodologies, − Compose diverse system visualizations using Web-based X3D graphics, − Benefit from distributed modeling methods using MDA, and − Best employ resource repositories for broad and consistent composability. Furthermore, the report recommends the establishment of necessary management organizations responsible for the necessary alignment of management processes and procedures within the JSB as well as with neighbored domains. Continuous interoperability cannot be accomplished by technical standards alone. The application of technical standards targets the implementation level of the system of systems, which results in an interoperable solution valid only for the actual 2 implementation. To insure continuity, the influence of updates, upgrades and introduction of components on the system of systems must be captured in the project management procedures of the participating systems. Finally, the report proposes an exemplifying set of proof-of-capability demonstration prototypes and a five-year technical/institutional transformation plan. All key references are online available at http://www.movesinstitute.org/xmsf/xmsf.html (if not explicitly stated otherwise)

An Intelligent Knowledge Management System from a Semantic Perspective

Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) are important tools by which organizations can better use information and, more importantly, manage knowledge. Unlike other strategies, knowledge management (KM) is difficult to define because it encompasses a range of concepts, management tasks, technologies, and organizational practices, all of which come under the umbrella of the information management. Semantic approaches allow easier and more efficient training, maintenance, and support knowledge. Current ICT markets are dominated by relational databases and document-centric information technologies, procedural algorithmic programming paradigms, and stack architecture. A key driver of global economic expansion in the coming decade is the build-out of broadband telecommunications and the deployment of intelligent services bundling. This paper introduces the main characteristics of an Intelligent Knowledge Management System as a multiagent system used in a Learning Control Problem (IKMSLCP), from a semantic perspective. We describe an intelligent KM framework, allowing the observer (a human agent) to learn from experience. This framework makes the system dynamic (flexible and adaptable) so it evolves, guaranteeing high levels of stability when performing his domain problem P. To capture by the agent who learn the control knowledge for solving a task-allocation problem, the control expert system uses at any time, an internal fuzzy knowledge model of the (business) process based on the last knowledge model.knowledge management, fuzzy control, semantic technologies, computational intelligence

A Governance Reference Model For Service-oriented Architecture-based Common Data Initialization A Case Study Of Military Simulation Federation Systems

Military simulation and command and control federations have become large, complex distributed systems that integrate with a variety of legacy and current simulations, and real command and control systems locally as well as globally. As these systems continue to become increasingly more complex so does the data that initializes them. This increased complexity has introduced a major problem in data initialization coordination which has been handled by many organizations in various ways. Serviceoriented architecture (SOA) solutions have been introduced to promote easier data interoperability through the use of standards-based reusable services and common infrastructure. However, current SOA-based solutions do not incorporate formal governance techniques to drive the architecture in providing reliable, consistent, and timely information exchange. This dissertation identifies the need to establish governance for common data initialization service development oversight, presents current research and applicable solutions that address some aspects of SOA-based federation data service governance, and proposes a governance reference model for development of SOA-based common data initialization services in military simulation and command and control federations

Application of Web Services to a Simulation Framework

The Joint Semi-Automated Forces (JSAF) simulator is an excellent tool for military training and a great testbed for new SAF behaviors. However, it has the drawback that behaviors must be ported into its own Finite State Machine (FSM) language. Web Services is a growing technology that seamlessly connects service providers to service consumers. This work attempts to merge these two technologies by modeling SAF behaviors as web services. The JSAF simulator is then modeled as a web service consumer. This approach allows new Semi-Automated Forces (SAF) behaviors to be developed independently of the simulator, which provides the developer with greater flexibility when choosing a programming language, development environment, and development platform. In addition to new SAF behaviors, this approach also supports any external component that can be modeled as a web service. Furthermore, these services are often run over a network, which distributes the computational load across several computers. Finally, hosting copies of a single service on several machines, a concept similar to file-sharing mirrors, offers an environment for load-balancing. This means if several entities are running the same behavior, a single server does not perform the computation for every entity. Instead, each entity is assigned to a specific server, increasing the quality of service seen by the system. A Web Services framework linking JSAF with several services is designed and implemented. Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) behaviors written in MATLAB and a behavior recognition system are integrated with JSAF. These behaviors and the recognition tool were developed by other researchers, independent of this work. Results show that offloading computation to other machines is beneficial, especially when the simulation system is under heavy load. Preliminary results also indicate that load-balancing performs much better than using a single server