Intelligence collection ontology

In the paradigm of intelligence collection ontological, which gives computer assistance to requesters of information and managers of information collection sources and methods, the requester is asked the question "What are the requirements of a mission?" These include the type of data to be collected (as distinct from the collection method), the priority of the request, and the need for clandestinity in collection.

Collection system managers, are asked, in parallel, to specify the capabilities of their assets. Preece's ontology is focused on ISTAR technical sensors, but also considers HUMINT, OSINT, and other possible methodologies.

The intelligent model then compares "the specification of a mission against the specification of available assets to assess the utility or fitness for purpose of available assets; based on these assessments, obtain a set of recommended assets for the mission: either decide whether there is a solution —a single asset or combination of assets— that satisfies the requirements of the mission, or alternatively provide a ranking of solutions according to their relative degree of utility."

Starting with their example of matching a request for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to a mission, they define "the UAV concept encompasses kinds of UAV, which may range in cost from a few thousand dollars to tens of millions of dollars, and ranging in capability from Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) weighing less than one pound to aircraft weighing over 40,000 pounds...

• Small UAV (SUAV), designed to perform “over-the-hill” and “around-the-corner” reconnaissance

• Tactical UAV (TUAV), which focuses on the close battle, providing targeting, situation development and battle damage assessment in direct response to the brigade/Task Force commande

• Endurance UAV, aimed at the deep battle, supporting the division to 150 Km and the Corps battle to 300 Km. This class has two subclasses of the Endurance UAV:

• Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAV, designed to operate at altitudes between 5000 and 25000 feet
• High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) UAV, which are designed to function as Low Earth Orbit satellites.

From a logical standpoint, the subclasses of UAV are disjoint. A UAV cannot belong to more than one subclass. There exists a resource list and schedule of available platforms, which shows the following UAVs available:

• A Pioneer, which is a TUAV
• A Predator, which is a MALE-UAV
• A Global Hawk, which is a HALE-UAV.

Now suppose that as part of a given mission a Persistent Surveillance task over a wide area is required to detect any suspicious movement. This kind of tasks is best served by an Endurance-UAV, since it is able to fly for long periods of time. From just the concept definitions we know that:

1. the Pioneer is not an endurance UAV (because of the disjoint relationship among Endurance-UAV and TUAV)
2. both the Predator and the Global Hawk are Endurance-UAVs (because of the subclass relationships).

Both the Predator and Global Hawk meet the basic requirements. An additional rule checks the weather forecast, and determines that storms are likely during the planned mission time. That links to another rule, which states that in the event of bad weather, assuming the platform has a weather-penetrating sensor, a platform should be selected that can fly "above" the weather. In other words, a platform with high-altitude capability is needed. The Global Hawk is the only available platform that meets all these requirements.

To go to a finer-grained level of matching, the project used information containment relationships, with examples from the ISTAR domain. Even beyond that technique is ordinal ranking of matching.

"Q denotes a query which specifies some intelligence requirements to be met, and S1 − S5 denote the specification of ISR assets (sensors and sensor platforms) to be matched against Q.

"our query specifies two basic requirements to be met:

1. Provide Infrared (IR) Imagery
2. Carry out a Night Reconnaissance task"

Their article describes the rank ordering, with an exact match of S_n to Q, a perfect match of the requirement to the collection platform, down to the other entirely. A less desirable alternative meets the flight profile requirements, but it carries synthetic aperture radar rather than IR, and a platform that only has visual-spectrum television and no night capability is completely unsuited.

It is to be noted that the requirements are what are critical, not the particular platform. For the specific requirements, they also might be met with a manned long-endurance aircraft (e.g., P-3 Orion or Nimrod R), or relays of aircraft, or with satellites with appropriate orbits and sensors. These were not included in the ontology used for demonstration.