An Ontology for Hypothesis Management in the Maritime Domain
Richard J. Haberlin, Paulo Sérgio Mendes César, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey · 2011
Abstract : In the operational environment, situational awareness (SA) supports tactical decision making through fusion of information about intelligence, geography, environment, and the geopolitical situation. Advanced decision support systems will provide the decision maker with a number of hypotheses from which the evolving situation may be inferred, limited only by the computational capacity of available computer hardware. Hypothesis Management is needed to control of exponential growth in fusion hypotheses created from incoming data reports delivered by individuals and units connected by a Semantic Services Registry. A Model-Based Systems Engineering Process was applied to design a series of algorithms for a Hypothesis Management Engine (HME) that explicitly manage the creation, modification, storage, and filtering of hypotheses. The scenario environment is modeled with the support of a Maritime Domain Ontology, which represents relationships between entities of interest. The effectiveness of the Hypothesis Management Engine is evaluated through simulation of a contextually accurate, randomly generated Hypothesis Knowledge Base which must be updated with incoming track data and queried for inferential reasoning candidates meeting the System Operator's request. This paper summarizes our research results and delineates the planned interaction of the Hypothesis Management Engine with an inferential reasoning system.