Quality of information approach to improving source selection in tactical networks

Intelligence operations in highly dynamic and constrained networked environments require a prudent strategies to query information sources. We consider the performance of this process based on metrics relating to quality of information: accuracy, timeliness, completeness and reliability. These metrics are identified in military doctrine as requirements that promote mission success. Further, it is possible to identify specific network metrics that are indicators of that the network is meeting these quality requirements. We study effective data rate, social distance, link integrity and the utility of information as metrics within a multi-genre network to determine the quality of information of its available sources. This paper proposes a formulation of the analytic hierarchy process to score information sources based on these concepts. A modification to this algorithm is also presented which incorporates the dynamics of the measurements. This is a multimodal fusion approach that considers elements from communications, information and social networks to assist a decision maker in the source selection problem. We show how this approach can be used to score information sources for such tasks using results from representative simulations.