Introduction

The University at Buffalo (UB) Center for Multisource Information Fusion (CMIF) along with a team including the Pennsylvania State University (PSU), Iona College (Iona), and Tennessee State University (TSU) is conducting research to develop a generalized framework, mathematical techniques, and test and evaluation methods to address the ingestion and harmonized fusion of Hard and Soft information in a distributed (networked) Level 1 and Level 2 data fusion environment.

This research activity is supported by a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant (Number W911NF-09-1-0392) for “Unified Research on Network-based Hard/Soft Information Fusion,” issued by the US Army Research Office (ARO) under the program management of Dr. John Lavery. This web site provides a summary of the project progress. The primary Research Thrusts addressed are framed around the major functional components of the JDL Fusion Process; these include:

1.Source Characterization of Soft Data input streams including; human observation.—direct, indirect, open source inputs, linguistic framing, and text processing

2.Common Referencing and Alignment of Hard and Soft Data, especially strategies and methods for meta-data generation for Hard-Soft data normalization

3.Generalized Data Association Strategies and Algorithms for Hard and Soft Data

4.Robust Estimation Methods that exploit associated Hard and Soft Data

5.Dynamic Network-based Effects on Hard-Soft Data Fusion Architectures and Methods

6.Test and Evaluation Methodology Development to include Human-in-the-Loop

7.Extensibility, Adaptability, and Robustness Assessment

8.Fusion Process Framework

9.Technology Concept of Employment

This program is a five-year effort and considered distinctive in being a major academic thrust into the complexities of the hard and soft fusion problem.