Data fusion in defense and national security: Ubiquitous and indispensable

Data fusion refers to exploitation of information originating from diverse and distributed sensors in order to achieve levels of awareness about the sensed domains that no one source could provide. Fusion of multi-source information can result in global awareness from local knowledge, reduced uncertainty or ambiguity, higher information resolution, and better reliability through redundancy. These make multi-sensor information fusion a highly desirable and critical technology for use in defense and national security. Sensor networks composed of large number of resource constrained miniature wireless sensors based on dynamic ad-hoc network topology are attractive in this regard because of their wide coverage, scalability, redundancy, cost effectiveness and pervasive deployment possibilities. However, there are quite a few challenges on the way. Non-commensurate data sources from heterogeneous sensors pose challenges in the areas of data alignment, registration, and association. Handing conflicting information is also a challenge. In addition, the potential for large data volume generated by sensor networks may be difficult to process in real time. This paper highlights the ubiquity of data fusion in defense and national security related application domains and emphasizes the role of information visualization in exploiting the human-computer synergy for effective comprehension of situational awareness through multi-sensor data fusion.