From kinematics to symbolics for situation and threat assessment

Aircraft move about in a situation not randomly, but rather for a purpose and with an intent. A historical and model free description of the objects in a situation can reveal their purpose and intent as expressed by, and realised in, their tracking behaviour. An ontological analysis of actual track data considered in its context, has revealed the necessary relationships between dynamic objects and, (i) their history, (ii) other static objects, and (iii) other dynamic objects. The ontology is presented in detail and illustrated with representative examples, both simple and complex, from actual surveillance operations. The relationships in the ontology are not only sufficiently expressive to describe the situations in these examples, but will allow querying from an inference engine, such as ATTITUDE, which can then make inferences about the situation and deduce more knowledge online, even if the situation is a one off occurrence