Intelligent Information Fusion in the Aviation Domain: A Semantic-Web Based Approach

*, } Information fusion from multiple sources is a critical requirement for envisioned “System Wide Information Management” in the National Airspace (NAS). NASA and the FAA envision creating an “integrated pool” of information originally coming from different sources, into which users, intelligent agents and NAS decision support tools (DSS) can tap into. In this paper we present the results of our initial investigations into the requirements and prototype development of such an integrated information pool for the NAS. We have attempted to ascertain key requirements for such an integrated pool based on a survey of DSS tools that will benefit from this integrated information pool. We then advocate key technologies from computer science research areas such as the semantic web, information integration, and intelligent agents that we believe are well suited to achieving the envisioned system wide information management capabilities. I. Introduction onsider a situation where bad weather around a particular airport requires that the controllers suspend landing and take-off of any aircraft from that airport for a 2 hour period. All flights scheduled to land into or take-off from this airport in that specified period then need to be rerouted or rescheduled. Naturally this disruption causes flight delays, inconveniences air passengers, and may result in additional expenses for the airlines and the FAA. Can we deal efficiently and optimally with such situations i.e., can we do the required re-scheduling and rerouting by minimizing the flight delays and missed connections and also minimizing the additional financial costs to the airlines and authorities ? This is precisely the goal of the NASA FAA System Wide Information Management (SWIM) initiative. The SWIM initiative proposes to have various distributed information sources and services in National Airspace (NAS) connected seamlessly so that end users such as air-traffic controllers, other decision makers and decision aids such as decision support tools (DSS) or intelligent agents have integrated access to all the information needed to make informed decisions in the above kinds of situations. In this paper we present the results of our initial investigation into a critical as pect of SWIM which is the information integration issue. Seamless integrated access needs to be provided to the various distributed, heterogeneous and autonomously created and maintained information sources and services in the NAS. One of our thrusts has been to ascertain the information integration requirements in the NAS domain by talking to various potential stake-holders and familiarizing ourselves with the information access needs in the NAS. The other thrust has been to then evaluate what concepts, technologies, approaches and systems we can take from the state-of-the-art in computer science and information management research to apply to the information integration problem in the NAS. This has been with the goal of developing a prototype Aviation Information Integration and Monitoring System (AIMS) demonstrating the information access and integration capabilities. We present our findings on the above in the following sections concluding with recommendations for further activity.