Rich Mechanisms to Support Context-aware Data Abstractions: Capturing the Relationship of Data to Abstraction Levels with the Context

The promise of the net-centric operations, with the Service Oriented Architecture –based access to the GIG means that information flows can be pulled from many sources, at any time. From the CERDEC C2D Industry Day Briefing, ‘information is abundant, received from many different sources (human and sensor), and is presented in a variety of ways (text, voice, image). However, as shown in recent experiments and noted in the report, at the tactical and operational levels, ‘human decision makers are not able to use the abundance of information available over the network effectively’. In order for effective net centric operations, ‘information systems must augment and operate within human cognitive capabilities and limitations’. IAI’s proposed innovation, the rich mechanisms of Context-aware Data Abstractor (CADA) Tool offer key support for human cognitive capabilities. CADA supports the user in making sense out of the quantities of data, originating in flows that are streaming through the networks. The key innovation is the abstraction techniques offered by CADA that organizes the data and presents the user with abstractions that describe data at a high level.