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MITRE has established the Information Interoperability Lab (iLab) at our Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, site to provide resources to investigate key strategies, processes, and technologies to enable information management and exchange. We are researching the use of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and m-commerce (mobile commerce) concepts, and the use of commercial-off-the-shelf tools to build prototypes for evaluating proposed information management strategies. Of particular relevance is the use of mobile applications supported by numerous eXtensible Markup Language (XML) protocols, especially Wireless Markup Language (WML). To gain a better understanding of the issues involved in supporting mobile access within the Joint Battlespace Infosphere (JBI) infrastructure, members of the iLab team have developed several demonstrations taken from the domains of command and control and agile combat support. What is the JBI? It was originally described by the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board in its 1998 report, “Information Management to Support the Warrior,” as a system of systems that integrates, aggregates, and distributes information to users at all echelons, from the command center to the battlefield. The original report envisioned an information-centric infrastructure providing management services that broker information exchanges among producers and consumers. One of the goals of the JBI is to deliver the right information to the right user at the right time in the right format. Because many of the information producers and consumers will lack wired connections to a shared information network, mobile access to the Info-sphere will be essential. However, mobile information access presents significant challenges due both to the technological limitations of current mobile devices and to the conditions under which many mobile users must operate. Current technology constrains processing power, screen size, memory, input/output bandwidth, and battery power. While technological advances will lessen some of these constraints, mobile devices are likely to remain significantly less capable than their desktop cousins. The operating environment is also a key consideration in the design of an information management strategy for mobile users. Not only must workers pay particularly close attention to such mobile work assignments as aircraft refueling and aircraft repair, but they must also undertake these operations under hostile conditions. Gaining access to information must be managed to minimize interference with their other tasks. Thus, managing the context of the information access is a critical aspect of an overall mobile information strategy. For example, the “opsFuel” demonstration extracts information for a set of refueling missions for a particular aircrew from an Air Tasking Order (ATO) that describes missions for all aircraft flying in a 24-hour period. Although in an active battle situation the ATO can be very large (several megabytes of textual information), the information needed by any one user can often be manageably viewed through a mobile device.
Figure 1 shows mission data displayed on a PALM™ personal data assistant (PDA) for a refueling operation that involves a KC-135R tanker. This particular screen describes the characteristics of the tanker aircraft. Other screens describe the characteristics of the fighter jets that will be refueled, including their call signs and times of arrival. Relevant information was extracted from the ATO and converted into WML for display on the PDA screen using a commercially available wireless access protocol browser. This represents significant advantages over the current system, which depends on paper copies of relevant portions of the ATO. One of the new system’s main advantages is its ability to reflect last-minute changes accurately. The relative ease with which the inherent limitations of bandwidth, storage capacity, and screen size can be overcome by the extraction of relevant information from a large information object testifies to the advantages of XML technologies, which support the representation and transformation of information, and to the publish-and-subscribe information policies of the JBI that broker information sharing. The second example demonstrates a distributed collaboration involving both mobile and stationary users. To provide context for the information flow, the iLab has implemented a primitive workflow using the JBI infrastructure. We have modeled the communications among a mechanic in the field, who finds a broken part; her supervisor, who must approve the removal of a working part from another aircraft; and a second mechanic, who will assist in the switch. The information about the availability of parts is extracted from an existing legacy database and published in the Infosphere as an XML document.
Figure 2 shows the information displayed on the mechanic’s mobile phone as she works on the flight line. If the part is not locally available, the mechanic will click on the “Requisition Part” link to send a request for assistance to the supervisor. This request publishes a need that activates a workflow to notify any supervisor who subscribes to a requisition need request for the part. The workflow is modeled as a series of “subscribe to workflow requests”/“publish workflow need” activities within the JBI information flow model. Any number of participants can register to be part of this workflow. The first demonstration illustrates the ability to select and transform information that can be effectively used by a mobile user. The second addresses the challenge of building an information infrastructure that will support collaborative problem solving by a team of participants, even when members of this team have only mobile connections. The involvement of other team members will augment a mobile user's capabilities, and the workflow will guide access to relevant information and can be used to pre-fetch information that will be needed in the near future. It is clear that information management is the essential piece that enables development of a productive, collaborative operating environment out of a heterogeneous infrastructure consisting of both fixed and inherently limited mobile elements. Modern fixed infrastructure pieces will soon be capable of information input/output at 10 gigabits; processing is limited only by the technological state of the art. Their mobile/wireless brethren, however, are typically constrained by radio frequency input/output capacity, battery life, screen display size, weight, and many other factors. Further, in order to maximize the utility of limited resources, especially in a collaborative situation, knowledge of the nature of available information and any user’s needs must be exploited. To find the best approaches, MITRE’s iLab will continue to conceive, prototytpe, and test innovative information management strategies for the future. For more information, please contact Christian Wild using the employee directory. |
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