Situation/threat context assessment

There is a debate within the information fusion community whether situation and threat assessment (SA/TA) are separate as called out in the Joint Directors of the Lab (JDL) or interlinked in the Data Fusion Information Group (DFIG) Model. Situation assessment seeks a geospatial and temporal acknowledgement of the environment while threat assessment determines the impacts from the situation. Three types of impacts exist: entities (e.g., objects), environments (e.g. natural disasters), and relationships (interactions among entities). While object assessment can be determined from Bayes and/or evidential reasoning, it is also extended to threat assessment through a prior effects and world modeling. In this paper, we bring together the discussions of context as related to the discussion on SA/TA contextual analysis. While it is inherent that context plays a role in TA; we seek to highlight some of the assumptions, difficulties, and needs for TA — most notably stemming from requirements for sensor, user, and mission (SUM) management. SA and TA can be separate, linked, or serial, depending on the circumstance. An example is presented that highlights the need for context assessment in threat analysis as related to the changing situation.