Decision Support for Dynamic Target Engagement DSDTE

1
Decision Support for Dynamic Target Engagement
(DS-DTE)
Daniel H. Wagner Associates, Inc. -
www.wagner.com
Daniel H. Wagner Associates, for the Office of
Naval Research (ONR), under subcontract to
Solers, Inc., and teamed with the Penn State
University Applied Research Lab (ARL) and
Information Sciences and Technology (IST)
department, is developing an advanced information
management architecture to provide timely and
accurate decision support during dynamic target
engagement. Figure 1 shows the agent-based
information management process, which 1) receives
and manages information requests through a
standard Web Service interface, 2) attempts to
retrieve information from the local data store,
3) consolidates off-board requests to reduce
message traffic, 4) determines and invokes the
optimal path to available information to satisfy
those requests, 5) invokes appropriate
transformations on returned information based on
requester preferences, and 6) synchronizes
process state and information across federated
nodes. During Spiral Three of this ongoing
project for ONR, we have implemented the
information management process within the overall
decision support architecture for Maritime
Dynamic Targeting (MDT).
Figure 1. Agent-Based Information Management
Process
All agents within the framework are
instantiations of the same code, and therefore
are capable of performing all potential tasks
however, each agent at any given time performs
only those tasks for which it is currently
responsible. That is, in the diagram above,
agent behaviors are represented, not specific
agents. For example, an agent might be
responsible for managing requests/subscriptions
over time (Request Manager), consolidating
similar requests based on domain-specific
understanding (Consolidators), optimizing access
to information sources (Resource Manager), or
maintaining synchronicity/context among federated
nodes (Context Manager) (or some combination
thereof). The agent code is implemented in Java
on the JADE agent framework, which provides
FIPA-compliant communications and dynamic agent
management.
This project is currently supported under the ONR
FORCEnet Future Naval Capability
(FNC). Distribution A Approved for Public
Release Distribution is unlimited.