Policy-Governed Information Exchange in a U.S. Army Operational Scenario

The authors are investigating how emerging policy and semantic Web technologies can be used to help provide the best set of available tactical information to the Soldier in the field. In this initial effort, Researchers from the U.S. Army Research Labs (ARL) and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) have developed a system that demonstrates the potential of these technologies in a small-scale U.S. army mockup scenario. The system represents and reasons about domain-specific policies to help recognize what documents the end soldier is allowed to receive given the current mission context. The system also relies on policies to help recognize when appropriate human approval can be obtained or a specific transformation of the information can be performed to allow the information to be sent. Semantic Web technologies are further used to describe the properties and features of each document and relate these features to mission contexts in which the information is likely to be appropriate. The result is a compelling demonstration of the role that policies and semantic Web technologies can play in promoting the Army´s need to share information while remaining vigilant of the requirements to protect methods and sources.