Fusion Standards Study, Part 2: Decision Fusion

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This study is now complete. The results are contained in

OGC Fusion Standards Study, Phase 2 Engineering Report

This Engineering Report summarizes two phases of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) Fusion Standards study and of the fusion prototypes developed during the OWS-7 Testbed which occurred between the two study phases. Recommendations from the first phase of the study were implemented in OWS-7. Based upon the results of OWS-7, responses to two Requests for Information and a multi-day workshop, this report provides a cumulative set of recommendations for advancing fusion based on open standards.

Some elements of the Fusion Standards Study, Phase 2 are included for development in OWS-8 Testbed.

The OGC is conducting a second phase of the OGC Fusion Standards Study, sponsored by the US National Geointelligence Agency (NGA). The study reviews geospatial fusion including: a review of existing standards regarding fusion; a survey of standards and implementations with the focus on multi-int information sources. Phase 2 of the study concentrates on development of a use case based evaluation of integrating data and information from multiple intelligence sources.

The first phase of the study examined Fusion in three categories: Sensor Fusion, Feature/Object Fusion and Decision Fusion. The OGC Engineering Report for Phase 1 of the study documents the evaluation of the current state of standards for each of these three categories. One of the recommendations of Phase 1 was that a second phase should be conducted to evaluate the broad topic of decision fusion.

Phase 2 of the study will focus on Decision Fusion. The Fusion Standards Study Phase 2 will build on the Phase 1 Engineering Report to develop a decision fusion scenario, identify the appropriate services and the applicable standards. The scenario will take into account requirements for multi-level security,exchange of information between analysts and in-the-field forces, and appropriate metadata tagging to include the life-cycle of data from collection to update to fusion. Other topics that may be considered include fusion centers, human centered fusion, “see and talk” collaboration with common geospatial view, coordination through social networks, and dynamic routing based on location and events.

The main activities planed for the Fusion Study Phase 2 include: