Improvised Explosive Devices in Asymmetric Conflicts: Multisource Data Fusion for Providing Situational Information

The system of systems (SoS) case study on improvised explosive device (IED) detection presents the problem of defeating IED threat in asymmetric conflicts. The Case Study describes an SoS solution for detecting the IED threat by applying multisource data fusion using data from a set of diverse information sources for identifying the locations with high probabilities of IED threats. The presented solution is an SoS where the individual systems act both as providers of data and consumers of data. In order to ensure correctness of data for the consumer in a dynamically changing system configuration, ProWare proactive middleware is applied. ProWare realizes a subscription-based information exchange model that makes use of validity information associated with the data to ensure data correctness. The SoS architecture concept is validated in a simulation of the IED detection scenario.