Networked and Embedded Systems Laboratory

Description

The goal of this project is to develop formal and rigorous approaches to reason about, and to optimize under resource constraints, the quality and value of sensor-based information flows. In large-scale distributed sensing, data from diverse sensor sources flow through increasingly higher-level inferences in a layered information fusion architecture to yield timely, actionable, trusted, and relevant intelligence information for decision makers. How well a particular information flow at a given level of abstraction conveys the true state of the world is formalized as Quality of Information (QoI), and is affected by a multitude of factors, such as: the integrity of the sensor sources; the characteristics of the network services; the nature of sensor information processing; the transformations that occur when information flows cross organizational, human-machine, and cultural boundaries; and, in the case of coalition operations, the policies governing information dissemination across coalition boundaries. How effective the information flow is for a particular use is formalized as Value of Information (VoI), and is a function of the information flow content, its QoI, and the decision making process (human or automated) that uses the information.

Editing project