Defence R&D Canada – Valcartier develops and implements information systems architectures and design techniques, information management systems and devices, experimental results and decision support tools to improve the efficiency of the decision-making cycle, and simulation environments including hardware systems.

Capabilities

• Information and Knowledge Management
• System of Systems (SoS)
• Decision Support Systems

The Centre investigates and demonstrates decision support concepts to provide operators with enhanced decision-support tools and capabilities and help them to cope with complex, uncertain and dynamic environments. This includes:

• supporting the understanding of the situations and its evolution;
• assisting in the decision-making process by identifying and selecting potential courses of action in response to anticipated or actual threats to the mission;
• supporting the implementation of the appropriate actions once a decision has been made.

Situation Analysis Support Systems (SASS)

Design computer-based SASS to assist commanders under battle conditions to achieve the appropriate situation awareness, thereby supporting their awareness of actual or anticipated threats. SASS first assist in the development and display of the tactical picture (position and objects identity); second in the association of hypothesized objects with known and expected organizations and events, and the use of what is known about enemy doctrine and objectives (intelligence)to predict the strengths and vulnerabilities for hostile and friendly forces.

Capabilities

Data/information fusion, reasoning under uncertainty (Bayes, evidential, possibilistic), expert systems, multi-agent and knowledge-based systems, and cognitive engineering.

Achievements

• Situation Analysis and Information Fusion (SAIF) laboratory
• SEATS (Simulation Environment for the Analysis of the Tactical Situation) is a modelling and simulation facility.
• CASE ATTI (Concept Analysis and Simulation Environment for Automatic Target Tracking and Identification) is an algorithm-level test and replacement capability to study state-of-the-art sensor fusion techniques.
• CODSI (Command Decision Support Interface) is an "operational-like" human-machine interface prototype that supports the study of human-computer interactions for SA, and methodologies for situation awareness measurement.
• ASCACT (Advanced Shipboard Command & Control Technology) is a real-time testbed to study multi-source data fusion applications.

Command and Control Process Modelling

• Understanding the military command and control process, considering both technological and human perspectives.
• Development of comprehensive models and methodologies to capture the requirements to support the military decision-making process.

Collaborative Decision and Planning

• Exploration of different approaches and technologies to assist in the decision-making process of identifying and selecting potential courses of action for the accomplishment of mission goals in complex and dynamically changing environments.

• Investigation of technologies in resource management to support and facilitate the carrying out of a series of joint actions. This requires control and dynamic planning, appropriate representation of the information and plans, review and generation of the plans, task allocation, negotiation, co-ordination and communication.

Capabilities

Intelligent control, blackboard systems, resource bounded reasoning, anytime algorithms, concurrent problem solving, genetic algorithms, expert systems, multi-agent systems, search theory, non-linear optimization, Bayesian statistics, spatial reasoning.

Achievements

• Search and Rescue Laboratory
  • ASISA: Agent System for Information Gathering/Situation Assessment
  • SARPLAN: Optimal mission planning system for overland search and rescue
  • EXITTS: Extraction of Information from Telephone and Text Sources
  • OntoSAR: Enhanced report generation using ontologies and XML
• WASP (Wing and Squadron Prototype) is a functional prototype to meet and validate requirements for mission support at 1CAD/CANR HQ, Wings, and Squadrons.
• KARMA (Knowledge-based Adaptive Resource Management Agent) is an adaptive intelligent tool to assist the military community in the management of air defence resources (operational/tactical mission planning).
• SRTE (Simulated Real-Time Environment) is a real-time blackboard system to study the real-time requirements of a multi-sensor data fusion and resource management system for the Canadian patrol frigate.

Computer Systems and Simulation

Simulations and proof-of-concept demonstrators, participation in field experiments, database management, project management, software engineering, real-time software development, various programming languages (C++, Java, etc.) and operating systems (Windows, NT, Unix) knowledge, network management, specialized command and control software systems knowledge.