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Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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Abstract

Terrain information supplies an important context for ground operations. The layout of terrain is a determining factor in arraying of forces, both friendly and enemy, and the structuring of Courses of Action (COAs). For example, key terrain, such as a bridge over an unfordable river, or terrain that allows observation of the opposing forces line of advance, is likely to give a big military advantage to the force that holds it. Combining information about terrain features with hypotheses about enemy assets can lead to inferences about possible avenues of approach, areas that provide cover and concealment, areas that are vulnerable to enemy observation, or choke points. Currently, intelligence officers manually combine terrain based information, information about the tactical significance of certain terrain features as well as information regarding enemy assets and doctrine to form hypotheses about the disposition of enemy forces and enemy intent. In this paper, we present a set of algorithms and tools for automating terrain analysis and compare their results with those of experienced intelligence analysts.

Keywords

terrain analysis, intelligence preparation of the battlefield, information fusion, GIS

Notes

Sponsor: Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Grant ID: F49620-01-1-0542

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Center for Integrated Manfacturing Decision Systems

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Advanced Agent - Robotics Technology Lab

Associated Project(s): AFOSR PRET: Information Fusion for Command and Control: The Translation of Raw Data To Actionable Knowledge and Decision

Number of pages: 6

Text Reference

Robin Glinton, Joseph Andrew Giampapa, Sean R. Owens, Katia Sycara, Charles E. Grindle, and C. Michael Lewis, "Integrating Context for Information Fusion: Automating Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield," Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Human Performance, Situation Awareness, and Automation Technology, March, 2004.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Glinton_2004_4683,
   author = "Robin Glinton and Joseph Andrew Giampapa and Sean R Owens and Katia Sycara and Charles E. Grindle and C. Michael Lewis",
   title = "Integrating Context for Information Fusion: Automating Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield",
   booktitle = "Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Human Performance, Situation Awareness, and Automation Technology",
   month = "March",
   year = "2004",
}

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