Distributed Repositories of Highly Expressive, Reusable, and Reasonable Ontologies for Web-based SNE Fusion

Driven by fiscal constraints, increasing pressure exists to employ simulation for driving exploration into new, more effective methods for modeling combat activities. The shorter timescales required as well as the need to rapidly incorporate operationalelements demanded by these applications bring new challenges. In particular, cost reduction in SNE development using parameterized scenario generation with compositional modeling is the core problem that needs to be addressed. Component-based developmentof complex SNE components requires domain-specific repository organization with intelligent component retrieval mechanisms along with reasoning methods for conflict identification before component assembly. Furthermore, merging disparate SNE componentsneeds sophisticated schema interoperability analysis, diagnosis, and merge tools. We propose an ontology-oriented Web-based SNE retrieval and fusion framework to support a component-based SNE development lifecycle. Specifically, DARPA Agent Markup Language(DAML), the ontology language of Semantic Web, is utilized to uniformly specify the service profiles of environmental models and SNE terrain data components. The framework builds on DAML and constitutes: (1) an ontology engineering subsystem, (2) anagent-based distributed ontology broker infrastructure, built on Trident's InterchangeSE - Object Oriented Data Repository, for SNE publishing, discovery, and retrieval, (3) diagnosis methods for SNE component certification before publishing, and (4)ontology merge and fusion mechanisms.The major programs that will be supported by the proposed effective representation and rapid synthetic natural environment derivation are: (1) advance concept development and defense planning, (2) R&D, acquisition, andmilitary doctrine development, and (3) training, exercise, and military operations user domains. Other domains exist that would enjoy the advancements in rapid generation and certification of synthetic environments. The GIS and C4I fields, for example,require the use of 2D and 3D data for visualization, analysis, and evaluation in support of decision-making tasks.