Pedigree information for enhanced situation and threat assessment

This paper describes how pedigree is used to support and enhance situation and threat assessment. It is based on the findings of the technology group of the Data Fusion Levels Two and Three Workshop sponsored by the Office of Naval Research held in Arlington, VA from 15-18 Nov. 2005. It identifies areas that need improvement in situation assessment and threat assessment, such as interoperability, automation, pedigree management, system usability, reliability, and uncertainty. The concept of pedigree must include "standard" metadata, lineage, plus a computational model of the quality of the information. The system must automatically propagate changes and update to derived products when source information or source-pedigree information changes. Several other processes must be automated: generate pedigree, identify and auto fill gaps, fuse pedigree, update pedigree, display of information quality and confidence. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research and development.