Application of search theory for large volume surveillance planning

DRDC Valcartier has initiated, through a PRECARN partnership project, the development of an advanced simulation test bed called CanCoastWatch. The main focus of this test bed is to study net-enabled concepts such as distributed information fusion algorithms and architectures, dynamic resources and networks configuration management, and self-synchronising units and agents. The test bed allows the evaluation of a range of control strategies from independent platform search, through various levels of platform collaboration, up to a centralized control of search platforms. In this paper, we present the integration of a planning tool based on search theory concept: SARPlan. In particular, we discuss the original idea of combining fusion results to build a containment probability distribution according to the search theory approach. This paper presents the results and discusses future development.