Contextual Awareness for Operators of Complex Sensor Systems

Canada is making significant investments in the deployment of existing distributed sensor platforms and systems for operations such as submarine monitoring and warfare. MDA is specifically interested in how to cost effectively improve this infrastructure and make it smarter, without changing the physical sensor. Understanding of a current situation by a human operator, in terms of its context, is very important for effective interpretation of sensor-derived data. A sensor operator will have access to the geographic, oceanographic, hydrographic, meteorological, and marine life information, as well as to the information on natural and artificial objects given by a variety of relevant and available data sources. We hypothesize that the more relevant, focused context knowledge is provided to the operator, the more effectively they can operate their sensor and get value out of the dollars spent in procuring and operating these sensors. Dalhousie University will collaborate with MDA to perform a literature study of the state-of-the-art unstructured database implementations and their design, to select and implement a specific Data Base Management System, and to prototype a visualization layer, importing data from existing, representative sources.