Uncertainty representations for a Vehicle-Borne IED surveillance problem

The aim of this paper is to detail further a Vehicle-Borne IED scenario proposed as an uncertainty modeling challenge to the information fusion community by the Evaluation of Techniques for Uncertainty Representation (ETUR) working group. This enrichment of the basic scenario is partly based on the careful comparison of formalizations published thus far by four uncertainty modeling experts as well as on the authors expertise in surveillance system design and risk assessment. The main additions reside in the exploitation of the temporal and spatial dimensions of the IED scenario initial statement. The authors show that the compromise between the expected risk, the time to certainty and time to intervene is central to the modeling of this very basic scenario and should be exploited further. According to the analysis of the formalizations of the VBIED scenario already published is seems also of interest to introduce the notion of agents to clarify the definition of state spaces. From the proposed model elements the authors expect that the scenario can be extended for more practical uses by allowing the addition of historical datasets from which a priori knowledge can be extracted, measurements be made from maps, and available resources balanced against expected risk.