A template based approach to specifying the information needs of military missions

Situational awareness supports mission assurance and requires access to archived and real-time information that is most relevant to the mission being performed, the roles of warfighters, and evolving operational scenarios. Information Management (IM) services support the discovery, brokering, and dissemination of past and future information in support of military missions. They decouple information providers from information consumers as they discover and disseminate information based on information attributes and consumer interests, no matter where, when, or how that information has become available. However, setting up the requests (i.e., subscriptions and queries) to provide situation awareness can be a complex task that requires significant time, expertise, and patience. This paper describes Adaptive Mission Templates (AMT), a prototype graphical environment for defining the information needs of operational missions; generating requests for information, including requests based on dynamic mission context; and specifying the prioritization of information based on mission needs and context. The AMT software has been demonstrated on US Air Force mission scenarios to generate requests and policies enforced by an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) information broker.