John Ibbotson

The provenance of electronic data

It would include details of the processes that produced electronic data as far back as the beginning of time or at least the epoch of provenance awareness.

Smart building management through augmented reality

This paper presents a software architecture for Smart Buildings assets management which enables engineers to receive and update work orders and asset information using augmented reality and mobile technologies. The proposed architecture consists of a layered structure composed of three main modules for Building Management Systems (BMS); data collection, event management and enrichment, and asset and work order management. In this architecture we use the Message Queue Telemetry Transport protocol (MQTT) to exchange messages between the system components. Work orders and alerts are modelled using the Common Alert Protocol (CAP) and sent to the augmented reality application through the ITA Information fabric; a middleware component using MQTT augmented with policy, workflow and datastore. We describe the high-level architecture supporting the experimentation and services provision, access policies and security aspects of such an architecture. This architecture can encapsulate the system functionality, assure the interoperability between various component systems, integrate different data standards, and ease the maintenance, management and upgrading of building assets and service requests. The design of a smart building application based on this architecture is illustrated and experimentation results confirm the viability and efficiency of the proposed framework.

Sensors as a Service Oriented Architecture: Middleware for Sensor Networks

There is a significant challenge in designing, optimizing, deploying and managing complex sensor networks over heterogeneous communications infrastructures. The ITA Sensor Fabric addresses these challenges in the areas of sensor identification and discovery, sensor access and control, and sensor data consumability, by extending the message bus model commonly found in commercial IT infrastructures out to the edge of the network. In this paper we take the message bus model further into a semantically rich, model-based design and analysis approach that considers the sensor network and its contained services as a Service Oriented Architecture. We present an application of a hierarchic schema for nested service definitions together with an initial ontology that describes the assets and services deployed in a sensor network infrastructure.

Mission Assurance through Requirements Traceability

The network element of a system provides benefits of connectivity between disparate systems, including within coalitions. In order to understand the behaviours of networked systems it is not sufficient just to capture network lay downs or other technical architectures. Instead the people, processes and technology need to be understood, along with their respective interactions. A key challenge the military faces is how mission objectives can be related to the assets available (technical & human). This paper will describe how concepts in requirements engineering, augmented with system survivability techniques, can provide a practical means to achieve mission assurance and mission configurability. Requirements traceability is achieved using satisfaction arguments, while also capturing assumptions and constraints. Further, requirements description using controlled natural language is demonstrated as a first step in providing a machine traceable approach that would potentially allow for automated detection and response in the future, such as for network hardening. This work will develop a prototype toolset which can be trialled with defence users.

MIPS: A service-based aid for intelligence analysis

The Management of Information Processing Services (MIPS) project has two main objectives; the notification to analysts of the arrival of relevant new information and the automatic processing of the new information. Within these objectives a number of significant challenges were addressed. To achieve the first objective, the team had to demonstrate the capability for specific analysts to be “tipped-off” in real-time that textual reports and sensor-data have been received that are relevant to their analytical tasks, including the possibility that such reports have been made available by other nations. In the case of the second objective, the team had to demonstrate the capability for the infrastructure to automatically initiate processing of input data as it arrives, consistent with satisfying the analytical goals of teams of analysts, in as an efficient a manner as possible (including the case where data is made available by more than one nation). Using the Information Fabric middleware developed as part of the International Technology Alliance (ITA) research program, the team created a service based information processing infrastructure to achieve the objectives and challenges set by the customer. The infrastructure allows existing software to be wrapped as a service and/or specially written services to be integrated with each other as well as with other ITA technologies such as the Controlled English (CE) Store or the Gaian Database. This paper will identify the difficulties in designing and implementing the MIPS infrastructure together with describing its architecture and illustrating its use with a worked example use case.

Model-driven SOA for sensor networks

Our previous work has explored the application of enterprise middleware techniques at the edge of the network to address the challenges of delivering complex sensor network solutions over heterogeneous communications infrastructures. In this paper, we develop this approach further into a practicable, semantically rich, model-based design and analysis approach that considers the sensor network and its contained services as a service-oriented architecture. The proposed model enables a systematic approach to service composition, analysis (using domain-specific techniques), and deployment. It also enables cross intelligence domain integration to simplify intelligence gathering, allowing users to express queries in structured natural language (Controlled English).

The convergence of open systems and interoperable systems

This paper sets out the case that technical ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) System Interoperability is a sub-set of more general Open and Modular Information System design; both address the same architectural issues associated with layers, templates, interface specification, profiles, data models, process control and assurance. The paper develops a set of frameworks and models to enable those ISR specialists concerned with interoperability to engage with those concerned with open and modular information system infrastructures.

Improving WSN application QoS and network lifetime management using SOA strategies

Quality of service (QoS) applications and network lifetime management are key challenges in military Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Service-level guarantees that are achievable in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can ensure reliability, availability and overall usability in any application. SOA can be useful in providing needed capabilities for the military in the traditional needs of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, information, surveillance and reconnaissance (often called C4I2SR). Military capabilities such as joint capability, interworking capability, COTS, organization agility, swarming, situational awareness and faster decision making are common applications that can benefit from SOA capabilities and each requires a certain level of quality to be successful. SOA provides the ability to dynamically locate and execute services within a composite function plan to achieve the desired QoS. A composite function plan is a template (blueprint) used to create a composite service. How to create the necessary structure in a military WSN is still a research topic to achieve the required levels of quality of service. We present a strategy that uses dynamic service selection to achieve higher levels in quality of service for WSNs, while preserving network lifetime. The realization of these strategies will be achieved through a SOA middleware layer in the WSN.