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To investigate the impact of visualizing car uncertainty on drivers' trust during an automated driving scenario, a simulator study was conducted. A between-group design experiment with 59 Swedish drivers was carried out where a continuous representation of the uncertainty of the car's ability to autonomously drive during snow conditions was displayed to one of the groups, whereas omitted for the control group. The results show that, on average, the group of drivers who were provided with the uncertainty representation took control of the car faster when needed, while they were, at the same time, the ones who spent more time looking at other things than on the road ahead. Thus, drivers provided with the uncertainty information could, to a higher degree, perform tasks other than driving without compromising with driving safety. The analysis of trust shows that the participants who were provided with the uncertainty information trusted the automated system less than those who did not receive such information, which indicates a more proper trust calibration than in the control group.

Threat evaluation (TE) is concerned with determining the intent, capability and opportunity of detected targets. To their aid, military operators use support systems that analyse incoming data and make inferences based on the active evaluation framework. Several interface and interaction guidelines have been proposed for the implementation of TE systems; however there is a lack of research regarding how to make these systems transparent to their operators. This paper presents the results from interviews conducted with TE operators focusing on the need for and possibilities of improving the transparency of TE systems through the visualization of uncertainty and the presentation of the system rationale. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

In the defense domain, to estimate if a targetis threatening and to which degree is a complex task, thatis typically carried out by human operators due to the highrisks and uncertainties associated. To their aid, different supportsystems have been implemented to analyze the data and providerecommendations for actions. Since the ultimate responsibilitylies in human operators, it is of utmost importance that theytrust and know how to use these systems, as well as have anunderstanding of their inner workings, strengths and limitations.This paper presents, first, a formative user study to char-acterize how air traffic operators carry out threat evaluationrelated tasks. Grounded in these findings and in guidelinesfound in the literature, we present a transparent and highlyinteractive prototype that aims at reducing operator’s cognitiveload and support threat assessment activities. The literaturereview provided on design guidelines, the outcomes of the userstudy, the design of the prototype as well as the results of aninitial evaluation can provide guidance for both researchers andprospective developers of future threat evaluation systems.

In the defense domain, to estimate if a targetis threatening and to which degree is a complex task, thatis typically carried out by human operators due to the highrisks and uncertainties associated. To their aid, different supportsystems have been implemented to analyze the data and providerecommendations for actions. Since the ultimate responsibilitylies in human operators, it is of utmost importance that theytrust and know how to use these systems, as well as have anunderstanding of their inner workings, strengths and limitations.This paper presents, first, a formative user study to char-acterize how air traffic operators carry out threat evaluationrelated tasks. Grounded in these findings and in guidelinesfound in the literature, we present a transparent and highlyinteractive prototype that aims at reducing operator’s cognitiveload and support threat assessment activities. The literaturereview provided on design guidelines, the outcomes of the userstudy, the design of the prototype as well as the results of aninitial evaluation can provide guidance for both researchers andprospective developers of future threat evaluation systems., This research has been supported by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation under grant 2010/0320 (UMIF), Vinnova through the National Aviation Engineering Research Program (NFFP5- 2009-01315), Saab AB and the University of Skövde. We would like to thank Håkan Warston (Saab AB, Electronic Defence Systems), Klas Wallenius and Kjell Davstad (Saab AB, Security and Defence Solutions) for their valuable feedback, and the participants of the field work and evaluation performed.

To investigate the impact of visualizing car uncertainty on drivers' trust during an automated driving scenario, a simulator study was conducted. A between-group design experiment with 59 Swedish drivers was carried out where a continuous representation of the uncertainty of the car's ability to autonomously drive during snow conditions was displayed to one of the groups, whereas omitted for the control group. The results show that, on average, the group of drivers who were provided with the uncertainty representation took control of the car faster when needed, while they were, at the same time, the ones who spent more time looking at other things than on the road ahead. Thus, drivers provided with the uncertainty information could, to a higher degree, perform tasks other than driving without compromising with driving safety. The analysis of trust shows that the participants who were provided with the uncertainty information trusted the automated system less than those who did not receive such information, which indicates a more proper trust calibration than in the control group., This research has been supported by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation under grant 2010/0320 (UMIF), Vinnova through the National Aviation Engineering Research Program (NFFP5- 2009-01315) and the University of Skövde. We would like to thank Reetta Hallila, Emil Kullander and Sicheng Chen (Volvo Car Corporation) for making the study possible and enjoyable! We also direct our thanks to the participants in the study.

Threat evaluation (TE) is concerned with determining the intent, capability and opportunity of detected targets. To their aid, military operators use support systems that analyse incoming data and make inferences based on the active evaluation framework. Several interface and interaction guidelines have been proposed for the implementation of TE systems; however there is a lack of research regarding how to make these systems transparent to their operators. This paper presents the results from interviews conducted with TE operators focusing on the need for and possibilities of improving the transparency of TE systems through the visualization of uncertainty and the presentation of the system rationale. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Advancements in technology and the need for improving the pilots' working situations have stimulated the growth of automated functions within the fighter aircraft domain. Functions that aid the pilots perform their tasks and to make decisions fast in an often rapidly changing environment have been introduced with the ultimate aim of easing the pilots' workloads and improving their situation awareness. However, both positive and negative effects of automating pilots' tasks have been documented, such as decreased workload and skill degradation, and it has been acknowledged that it is important to consider the needs of the human operator when designing automated functions. Human-Centred Automation (HCA) has been suggested as an approach for designing automated systems that brings forward the positive effects of automation. However, how to apply the concept of HCA in light of the specific prerequisites and demands of the modern fighter aircraft domain has not been fully investigated. This paper presents the results from interviews made together with fighter aircraft system developers, where the concept of HCA was investigated. Their opinions of the applicability of the concept of HCA within the fighter aircraft domain is represented as well as their thoughts about identified HCA guidelines in relation to the proposed support system. Conclusions drawn from the study are that HCA is indeed an important concept to consider within the domain as well as that the proposed guidelines could be of great use during the design process. Additionallly, insight into how to design automated support systems with the concept of HCA in mind is given.

Automated detection of anomalous trajectories is an important problem in the surveillance domain. Various algorithms based on learning of normal trajectory patterns have been proposed for this problem. Yet, these algorithms suffer from one or more of the following limitations: First, they are essentially designed for offline anomaly detection in databases. Second, they are insensitive to local sub-trajectory anomalies. Third, they involve tuning of many parameters and may suffer from high false alarm rates. The main contribution of this paper is the proposal and discussion of the Sliding Window Local Outlier Conformal Anomaly Detector (SWLO-CAD), which is an algorithm for online detection of local sub-trajectory anomalies. It is an instance of the previously proposed Conformal anomaly detector and, hence, operates online with well-calibrated false alarm rate. Moreover, SWLO-CAD is based on Local outlier factor, which is a previously proposed outlier measure that is sensitive to local anomalies. Thus, SWLO-CAD has a unique set of properties that address the issues above.

The surveillance of large sea, air or land areas normally involves the analysis of large volumes of heterogeneous data from multiple sources. Timely detection and identification of anomalous behavior or any threat activity is an important objective for enabling homeland security. While it is worth acknowledging that many existing mining applications support identification of anomalous behavior, autonomous anomaly detection systems for area surveillance are rarely used in the real world. We argue that such capabilities and applications present two critical challenges: (1) they need to provide adequate user support and (2) they need to involve the user in the underlying detection process. In order to encourage the use of anomaly detection capabilities in surveillance systems, this paper analyzes the challenges that existing anomaly detection and behavioral analysis approaches present regarding their use and maintenance by users. We analyze input parameters, detection process, model representation and outcomes. We discuss the role of visualization and interaction in the anomaly detection process. Practical examples from our current research within the maritime domain illustrate key aspects presented.

Abnormal behaviour may indicate important objects and situations in e.g. surveillance applications. This paper is concerned with algorithms for automated anomaly detection in trajectory data. Based on the theory of Conformal prediction, we propose the Similarity based Nearest Neighbour Conformal Anomaly Detector (SNN-CAD) which is a parameter-light algorithm for on-line learning and anomaly detection with wellcalibrated false alarm rate. The only design parameter in SNN-CAD is the dissimilarity measure. We propose two parameterfree dissimilarity measures based on Hausdorff distance for comparing multi-dimensional trajectories of arbitrary length. One of these measures is appropriate for sequential anomaly detection in incomplete trajectories. The proposed algorithms are evaluated using two public data sets. Results show that high sensitivity to labelled anomalies and low false alarm rate can be achieved without any parameter tuning.

Motivation – To guide the development of human-centred automation within the fighter aircraft domain. Research approach – Identified human-centred automation guidelines have been analysed in relation to existing fighter aircraft automated functions together with system developers at Saab Aeronautics. Findings/Design – The results show that the human-centred automation guidelines have been considered during the development process. From these results, implications for the design of guidelines and for the design of automated systems in the aircraft domain are drawn. Research limitations/Implications – Deeper analysis of how automated functions can support pilots in future fighter aircraft is needed since the proposed guidelines are too general for the military fighter aircraft domain. Thus, future work involves an evaluation of the guidelines together with fighter aircraft system developers and/or military strategists. Such analysis must be carried out with specific automated functions in mind. Originality/Value – By comparing with existing automated functions, the research makes contributions to HCA guidelines to be used in the fighter aircraft domain. Suggestions of human-centred automation improvements within the fighter aircraft domain are presented. The analysis has also identified differences between the proposed guidelines and parts of the studied implementation examples. Take away message – The HCA guidelines must be adapted according to the specific tasks that the automated functions are intended to assist the operators with. To adapt the automation according to the level of experience of the operators as well as to expand the cooperative automation functions between aircraft in a team have been identified as future directions for automation improvements within the fighter aircraft domain.

It has long been considered crucial to develop decision support systems that aid fighter pilots achieve their goals. Such systems often require automation of tasks formerly performed manually by the pilots, in situations characterized by huge amounts of (possibly uncertain and incomplete) sensor data and contextual information, time-pressure and dynamically changing tasks. Thus, careful investigations must be performed so as to develop such systems that provide accurate support for their users. This paper reports on the findings concerning research within the field of human-centred automation as well as presents empirical results concerning the applicability of automation guidelines when designing information fusion based support systems in the fighter aircraft domain.

The surveillance of large sea, air or land areas normally involves the analysis of large volumes of heterogeneous data from multiple sources. Timely detection and identification of anomalous behavior or any threat activity is an important objective for enabling homeland security. While it is worth acknowledging that many existing mining applications support identification of anomalous behavior, autonomous anomaly detection systems for area surveillance are rarely used in the real world. We argue that such capabilities and applications present two critical challenges: (1) they need to provide adequate user support and (2) they need to involve the user in the underlying detection process. In order to encourage the use of anomaly detection capabilities in surveillance systems, this paper analyzes the challenges that existing anomaly detection and behavioral analysis approaches present regarding their use and maintenance by users. We analyze input parameters, detection process, model representation and outcomes. We discuss the role of visualization and interaction in the anomaly detection process. Practical examples from our current research within the maritime domain illustrate key aspects presented.

The protection of defended assets such as military bases and population centers against hostile targets (e.g., aircrafts, missiles, and rockets) is a highly relevant problem in the military conflicts of today and tomorrow. In order to neutralize threats of this kind, they have to be detected and engaged before causing any damage to the defended assets. We review algorithms for solving the resource allocation problem in real-time, and empirically investigate their performance using the open source testbed SWARD. The reults show that many of the tested algorithms produce high quality solutions for small-scale problems. A novel vaiant of particle swarm optimization seeded with an enhanced greedy algorithm is described and is shown to perform best for large instances of the real-time allocation problem.

Modern healthcare's need for knowledge sharing and bridging the research–practice gap requires new forms of collaboration, in which clinicians of varying clinical and research expertise work together over geographical and organisational borders. To support such distributed communities of practice (CoPs), an understanding of their collaboration processes, outcomes, challenges and enablers is needed. The article examines these issues through a case study of a long-running CoP, the Swedish Oral Medicine Network (SOMNet). SOMNet's main form of collaboration is monthly telephone conference meetings centred on case consultations. Cases are submitted by the clinicians via a Web-based system. The methods used were interviews, observations, and a questionnaire. The work adds to previous research by studying a distributed CoP explicitly focused on supporting the transfer of scientific results from researchers to practitioners. We found that the regular meetings give a rhythm to the community. The centrality of cases means an immediate benefit for the submitter while the community is provided an authentic context for learning. SOMNet yields opportunities for help and learning for diverse expertise levels; the type of benefits is affected by the participant's degree of oral medicine knowledge and collaboration involvement. There are challenges in accommodating varying levels of expertise and encouraging those less experienced to participate. Enablers of the collaboration include the participation of experts, meeting facilitators and well-adapted ITs.

Despite the growing number of systems providing visual analytic support for investigative analysis, few empirical studies include investigations on the analytical reasoning process that needs to be supported. In this paper, we present an approach to evaluate the ability of certain visual representations from an integrated visual-computational environment to support the completion of representative tasks. The problem area studied is the detection and identification of anomalous vessels and situations while monitoring maritime traffic data. This paper presents: (1) a brief review of current evaluation methodologies within information visualization and visual analytics, (2) an analysis of operator’s analytical reasoning process (derived from field work in maritime control centers and a literature review on analytical reasoning theories), (3) a list of representative tasks for usability evaluation and (4) an approach to evaluate the use of normal behavioral models representations during the detection process.

Many approaches for anomaly detection use statistical based methods that build profiles of normality. In these cases, anomalies are defined as deviations from normal models build from representative data. Detection systems based solely on these approaches typically generate high false alarm rates due to the difficulty of creating flawless models. In order to support the comprehension, validation and update of such models, this paper is devoted to the visualization of normal behavioral models of sea traffic and their usability evaluation. First, we present geographical projections of the different probability density functions that represent the normal traffic behavior and second, we outline results from a usability assessment carried out in order to evaluate the ability of such visualizations to support representative tasks related to the establishment of normal situational picture.

Despite the growing number of systems providing visual analytic support for investigative analysis, few empirical studies include investigations on the analytical reasoning process that needs to be supported. In this paper, we present an approach to evaluate the ability of certain visual representations from an integrated visual-computational environment to support the completion of representative tasks. The problem area studied is the detection and identification of anomalous vessels and situations while monitoring maritime traffic data. This paper presents: (1) a brief review of current evaluation methodologies within information visualization and visual analytics, (2) an analysis of operator’s analytical reasoning process (derived from field work in maritime control centers and a literature review on analytical reasoning theories), (3) a list of representative tasks for usability evaluation and (4) an approach to evaluate the use of normal behavioral models representations during the detection process.

Situation recognition is an important problem to solve for introducing new capabilities in surveillance applications. It is concerned with recognizing a priori defined situations of interest, which are characterized as being of temporal and concurrent nature. The purpose is to aid decision makers with focusing on information that is known to likely be important for them, given their goals. Besides the two most important problems: knowing what to recognize and being able to recognize it, there are three main problems coupled to real time recognition of situations. Computational complexity — we need to process data and information within bounded time. Tractability — human operators must be able to easily understand what is being modelled. Expressability — we must be able to express situations at suitable levels of abstraction. In this paper we attempt to lower the computational complexity of a Petri net based approach for situation.

Military fighter pilots have to make suitable decisions fast in an environment where continuously increasing flows of information from sensors, team members and databases are provided. Not only do the huge amounts of data aggravate the pilots’ decision making process: time-pressure, presence of uncertain data and high workload are factors that can worsen the performance of pilot decision making. In this paper, initial ideas of how to support the pilots accomplishing their tasks are presented. Results from interviews with two fighter pilots are described as well as a discussion about how these results can guide the design of a military fighter pilot decision support system, with focus on team cooperation.

Situation recognition is an important problem within the surveillance domain, which addresses the problem of recognizing a priori defined patterns of interesting situations that may be of concurrent and temporal nature, and which possibly are occurring in the present flow of data and information. There may be many viable approaches, with different properties, for addressing this problem however, something they must have in common is good efficiency and high performance. In order to determine if a potential solution has these properties, it is a necessity to have access to test and development environments. In this paper we present DESIRER, a development environment for working with situation recognition, and for evaluating and comparing different approaches.

The problem of allocating defensive weapon resources to hostile targets is an optimization problem of high military relevance. The need for obtaining the solutions in real-time is often overlooked in existing literature. Moreover, there does not exist much research aimed at comparing the performance of different algorithms for weapon-target allocation. We have implemented a suite of metaheuristic algorithms for solving the static weapon-target allocation problem, and compare their real-time performance on a large set of problem instances using the open source testbed SWARD. The compared metaheuristic algorithms are ant colony optimization, genetic algorithms, and particle swarm optimization. Additionally, we have compared the quality of the generated allocations to those generated by a well-known maximum marginal return algorithm. The results show that the metaheuristic algorithms perform well on small- and medium-scale problem sizes, but that real-time requirements limit their usefulness for large search spaces.

The protection of defended assets such as military bases and population centers against ballistic weapons (e.g. rockets and mortars) is a highly relevant problem in the military conflicts of today and tomorrow. In order to neutralize threats of this kind, they have to be detected and engaged before causing any damage to the defended assets. We propose algorithms for solving the resource allocation problem in real-time, and empirically investigate their performance using the open source testbed SWARD. The results show that a particle swarm optimization algorithm produce high quality solution for small-scale problems, and that agenetic algorithm yields the best solutions for the largest tested problem instances.

Many approaches for anomaly detection use statistical based methods that build profiles of normality. In these cases, anomalies are defined as deviations from normal models build from representative data. Detection systems based solely on these approaches typically generate high false alarm rates due to the difficulty of creating flawless models. In order to support the comprehension, validation and update of such models, this paper is devoted to the visualization of normal behavioral models of sea traffic and their usability evaluation. First, we present geographical projections of the different probability density functions that represent the normal traffic behavior and second, we outline results from a usability assessment carried out in order to evaluate the ability of such visualizations to support representative tasks related to the establishment of normal situational picture.

Situation recognition is an important problem to address for developing newcapabilities in the surveillance domain. It is concerned with recognizing a priori defined situations of interest, which can be of concurrent and temporal nature, possibly occurring in a continuous flow of data and information. It is however a complex task to manually define what constitutes an interesting situation, and we therefore investigate the possibility of using genetic algorithms for evolving Petri nets for situation recognition. Our results show that: (1) it is possible to evolve complex Petri nets, (2) it is possible to increase the performance of manually designed Petri nets, and (3) a dynamic genome representation consisting of complex genes is beneficial compared to a representation consisting of bit strings.

This paper presents a novel application of the theory of conformal prediction for distribution-independent on-line learning and anomaly detection. We exploit the fact that conformal predictors give valid prediction sets at specified confidence levels under the relatively weak assumption that the (normal) training data together with (normal) observations to be predicted have been generated from the same distribution. If the actual observation is not included in the possibly empty prediction set, it is classified as anomalous at the corresponding significance level. Interpreting the significance level as an upper bound of the probability that a normal observation is mistakenly classified as anomalous, we can conveniently adjust the sensitivity to anomalies while controlling the rate of false alarms without having to find any application specific thresholds. The proposed method has been evaluated in the domain of sea surveillance using recorded data assumed to be normal. The validity of the prediction sets is justified by the empirical error rate which is just below the significance level. In addition, experiments with simulated anomalous data indicate that anomaly detection sensitivity is superior to that of two previously proposed methods.

In the military aviation domain, the decisionmaker, i.e. the pilot, often has to process huge amounts of information in order to make correct decisions. This is further aggravated by factors such as time-pressure, high workload and the presence of uncertain information. A support system that aids the pilot to achieve his/her goals has long been considered vital for performance progress in military aviation. Research programs within the domain have studied such support systems, though focus has not been on team collaboration. Based on identified challenges of assessing team situation awareness we suggest an approach to future military aviation support systems based on information fusion. In contrast to most previous work in this area, focus is on supporting team situation awareness, including team threat evaluation. To deal with these challenges, we propose the development of a situational adapting system, which presents information and recommendations based on the current situation.

The allocation of firing units to hostile targets is an important process within the air defense domain. Many algorithms have been proposed for solving various weapon allocation problems, but evaluation of the performance of such algorithms is problematic, since it does not exist any standard scenarios on which to test the algorithms. It is to a large extent unknown how weapon allocation algorithms compare to each other when it comes to solution quality. We have developed the testbed SWARD, making it possible to systematically compare algorithm performance, and to support the development of new weapon allocation algorithms.

Monitoring the surveillance of large sea areas normally involves the analysis of huge quantities of heterogeneous data from multiple sources (radars, cameras, automatic identification systems, reports, etc.). The rapid identification of anomalous behavior or any threat activity in the data is an important objective for enabling homeland security. While it is worth acknowledging that many existing mining applications support identification of anomalous behavior, autonomous anomaly detection systems are rarely used in the real world. There are two main reasons: (1) the detection of anomalous behavior is normally not a well-defined and structured problem and therefore, automatic data mining approaches do not work well and (2) the difficulties that these systems have regarding the representation and employment of the prior knowledge that the users bring to their tasks. In order to overcome these limitations, we believe that human involvement in the entire discovery process is crucial. Using a visual analytics process model as a framework, we present VISAD: an interactive, visual knowledge discovery tool for supporting the detection and identification of anomalous behavior in maritime traffic data. VISAD supports the insertion of human expert knowledge in (1) the preparation of the system, (2) the establishment of the normal picture and (3) in the actual detection of rare events. For each of these three modules, VISAD implements different layers of data mining, visualization and interaction techniques. Thus, the detection procedure becomes transparent to the user, which increases his/her confidence and trust in the system and overall, in the whole discovery process.

The goal of visual analytical tools is to support the analytical reasoning process, maximizing human perceptual, understanding and reasoning capabilities in complex and dynamic situations. Visual analytics software must be built upon an understanding of the reasoning process, since it must provide appropriate interactions that allow a true discourse with the information. In order to deepen our understanding of the human analytical process and guide developers in the creation of more efficient anomaly detection systems, this paper investigates how is the human analytical process of detecting and identifying anomalous behavior in maritime traffic data. The main focus of this work is to capture the entire analysis process that an analyst goes through, from the raw data to the detection and identification of anomalous behavior. Three different sources are used in this study: a literature survey of the science of analytical reasoning, requirements specified by experts from organizations with interest in port security and user field studies conducted in different marine surveillance control centers. Furthermore, this study elaborates on how to support the human analytical process using data mining, visualization and interaction methods. The contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) within visual analytics, contribute to the science of analytical reasoning with practical understanding of users tasks in order to develop a taxonomy of interactions that support the analytical reasoning process and (2) within anomaly detection, facilitate the design of future anomaly detector systems when fully automatic approaches are not viable and human participation is needed.

Maritime surveillance systems analyze vast amounts of heterogeneous sensor data from a large number of objects. In order to support the operator while monitoring such systems, the identification of anomalous vessels or situations that might need further investigation may reduce the operator’s cognitive load. While it is worth acknowledgingthat many existing mining applications support identification of anomalous behavior, autonomous anomaly detection systems are rarely used in the real world, since the detection of anomalous behavior is normally not a welldefined problem and therefore, human expert knowledge is needed. This calls for the development of interaction components that can support the user in the detection process. In order to support the comprehension of the knowledge embedded in the system, we propose an interactive way of visualizing expert rules and normal behavioral models built from the data. The overall goal is to facilitate the validation and update of these models and signatures, supporting the insertion of human expert knowledge while improving confidence and trust in the system., KJ: fanns SAIL 2009? På publ.: "Informatics Research Centre, University of Skövde, Sweden"

The goal of visual analytical tools is to support the analytical reasoning process, maximizing human perceptual, understanding and reasoning capabilities in complex and dynamic situations. Visual analytics software must be built upon an understanding of the reasoning process, since it must provide appropriate interactions that allow a true discourse with the information. In order to deepen our understanding of the human analytical process and guide developers in the creation of more efficient anomaly detection systems, this paper investigates how is the human analytical process of detecting and identifying anomalous behavior in maritime traffic data. The main focus of this work is to capture the entire analysis process that an analyst goes through, from the raw data to the detection and identification of anomalous behavior. Three different sources are used in this study: a literature survey of the science of analytical reasoning, requirements specified by experts from organizations with interest in port security and user field studies conducted in different marine surveillance control centers. Furthermore, this study elaborates on how to support the human analytical process using data mining, visualization and interaction methods. The contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) within visual analytics, contribute to the science of analytical reasoning with practical understanding of users tasks in order to develop a taxonomy of interactions that support the analytical reasoning process and (2) within anomaly detection, facilitate the design of future anomaly detector systems when fully automatic approaches are not viable and human participation is needed.

Research on information fusion and situation management within the military domain, is often focused on data-driven approaches for aiding decision makers in achieving situation awareness. We have in a companion paper identified situation recognition as an important topic for further studies on knowledge-driven approaches. When developing new algorithms it is of utmost importance to have data for studying the problem at hand (as well as for evaluation purposes). This often become a problem within the military domain as there is a high level of secrecy, resulting in a lack of data, and instead one often needs to resort to artificial data. Many tools and simulation environments can be used for constructing scenarios in virtual worlds. Most of these are however data-centered, that is, their purpose is to simulate the real-world as accurately as possible, in contrast to simulating complex scenarios. In high-level information fusion we can however often assume that lower-level problems have already been solved - thus the separation of abstraction - and we should instead focus on solving problems concerning complex relationships, i.e. situations and threats. In this paper we discuss requirements that research on situation recognition puts on simulation tools. Based on these requirements we present a component-based simulator for quickly adapting the simulation environment to the needs of the research problem at hand. This is achieved by defining new components that define behaviors of entities in the simulated world.

The process of tracking and identifying developing situations is an ability of importance within the surveillance domain. We refer to this as situation recognition and believe that it can enhance situation awareness for decision makers. Situation recognition requires that many subproblems are solved. For instance, we need to establish which situations are interesting, how to represent these situations, and which inferable events and states that can be used for representing them. We also need to know how to track and identify situations and how to determine the correlation between present information about situations with knowledge. For some of these subproblems, data-driven approaches are suitable, whilst knowledge-driven approaches are more suitable for others. In this paper we discuss our current research efforts and goals concerning template-based situation recognition. We provide a categorization of approaches for situation recognition together with a formalization of the template-based situation recognition problem. We also discuss this formalization in the light of a pick-pocket scenario. Finally, we discuss future directions for our research on situation recognition. We conclude that situation recognition is an important problem to look into for enhancing the overall situation awareness of decision makers.

Threat evaluation is the process in which threat values are assigned to detected targets, based upon the inferred capabilities and intents of the targets to inflict damage to blue force defended assets. This is a high-level information fusion process of high importance, since the calculated threat values are used as input when blue force weapon systems are allocated to the incoming targets, a process often referred to as weapon allocation. Threat values can be calculated from a number of different parameters, such as the position of the closest point of approach (CPA) with respect to blue force defended assets, time required to reach the CPA, the target's velocity, and its type. A number of algorithms for calculating threat values have been suggested throughout literature, however, criteria to evaluate the performance of such algorithms seem to be lacking. In this paper, we discuss different ways to assess the performance of threat evaluation algorithms. In specific, we describe an implemented testbed in which threat evaluation algorithms can be compared to each other, based on a survivability criterion. Survivability is measured by running the threat evaluation algorithms on simulated scenarios and using the resulting threat values as input to a weapon allocation module. Depending on how well the threat evaluation is performed, the ability of the blue force weapon systems to eliminate the incoming targets will vary (and thereby also the survivability of the defended assets). Our obtained results for two different threat evaluation algorithms are presented and analyzed.

In air defense situations, decision makers have to protect defended assets through assigning available firing units to threatening targets in real-time. To their help they have decision support systems known as threat evaluation and weapon allocation (TEWA) systems. The problem of performance evaluation of such systems is of great importance, due to their critical role. Despite this, research on this problem is close to non-existing. We are discussing the use of survivability and resource usage cost as comparative performance metrics, which can be used for comparing the effectiveness of different system configurations, by using simulations. These metrics have been implemented into a testbed, in which we have performed some comparative experiments. Our results show that changes of individual parts of the threat evaluation and weapon allocation system configuration can have a large effect on the effectiveness of the system as a whole, and illustrate how the metrics and the testbed can be used.

Monitoring the surveillance of large sea areas normally involves the analysis of huge quantities of heterogeneous data from multiple sources (radars, cameras, automatic identification systems, reports, etc.). The rapid identification of anomalous behavior or any threat activity in the data is an important objective for enabling homeland security. While it is worth acknowledging that many existing mining applications support identification of anomalous behavior, autonomous anomaly detection systems are rarely used in the real world. There are two main reasons: (1) the detection of anomalous behavior is normally not a well-defined and structured problem and therefore, automatic data mining approaches do not work well and (2) the difficulties that these systems have regarding the representation and employment of the prior knowledge that the users bring to their tasks. In order to overcome these limitations, we believe that human involvement in the entire discovery process is crucial. Using a visual analytics process model as a framework, we present VISAD: an interactive, visual knowledge discovery tool for supporting the detection and identification of anomalous behavior in maritime traffic data. VISAD supports the insertion of human expert knowledge in (1) the preparation of the system, (2) the establishment of the normal picture and (3) in the actual detection of rare events. For each of these three modules, VISAD implements different layers of data mining, visualization and interaction techniques. Thus, the detection procedure becomes transparent to the user, which increases his/her confidence and trust in the system and overall, in the whole discovery process.

This paper presents a first attempt to evaluate two previously proposed methods for statistical anomaly detection in sea traffic, namely the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and the adaptive Kernel Density Estimator (KDE). A novel performance measure related to anomaly detection, together with an intermediate performance measure related to normalcy modeling, are proposed and evaluated using recorded AIS data of vessel traffic and simulated anomalous trajectories. The normalcy modeling evaluation indicates that KDE more accurately captures finer details of normal data. Yet, results from anomaly detection show no significant difference between the two techniques and the performance of both is considered suboptimal. Part of the explanation is that the methods are based on a rather artificial division of data into geographical cells. The paper therefore discusses other clustering approaches based on more informed features of data and more background knowledge regarding the structure and natural classes of the data.

Maritime surveillance systems analyze vast amounts of heterogeneous sensor data from a large number of objects. In order to support the operator while monitoring such systems, the identification of anomalous vessels or situations that might need further investigation may reduce the operator’s cognitive load. While it is worth acknowledgingthat many existing mining applications support identification of anomalous behavior, autonomous anomaly detection systems are rarely used in the real world, since the detection of anomalous behavior is normally not a welldefined problem and therefore, human expert knowledge is needed. This calls for the development of interaction components that can support the user in the detection process. In order to support the comprehension of the knowledge embedded in the system, we propose an interactive way of visualizing expert rules and normal behavioral models built from the data. The overall goal is to facilitate the validation and update of these models and signatures, supporting the insertion of human expert knowledge while improving confidence and trust in the system., KJ: fanns SAIL 2009? På publ.: "Informatics Research Centre, University of Skövde, Sweden"

Situation recognition – the task of tracking states and identifying situations - is a problem that is important to look into for aiding decision makers in achieving enhanced situation awareness. The purpose of situation recognition is, in contrast to producing more data and information, to aid decision makers in focusing on information that is important for them, i.e. to detect potentially interesting situations. In this paper we explore the applicability of a Petri net based approach for modeling and recognizing situations, as well as for managing the hypothesis space coupled to matching situation templates with the present stream of data.

The allocation of weapons to targets (such as missiles and hostile aircrafts) is a well-known resource allocation problem within the field of operations research. It has been proven that this problem, in general, is NP-complete. For this reason, optimal solutions to the static weapon-target allocation (WTA) problem can not be obtained in real-time for large-scale problems. We try to find the limit for how large problems that can be solved optimally in real-time by exhaustive search algorithms through running empirical experiments. We also propose a heuristic genetic algorithm for solving larger-scale problems., [CD-ROM]

Maritime situation awareness is of importance in a lot of areas – e.g. detection of weapon smuggling in military peacekeeping operations, and harbor traffic control missions for the coast guard. In this paper, we have combined the use of Self Organizing Maps with Gaussian Mixture Models, in order to enable situation awareness by detecting deviations from normal behavior in an unsupervised way. Initial results show that simple anomalies can be detected using this approach.

The use of technology to assist human decision making has been around for quite some time now. In the literature, models of both technological and human aspects of this support can be identified. However, we argue that there is a need for a unified model which synthesizes and extends existing models. In this paper, we give two perspectives on situation analysis: a technological perspective and a human perspective. These two perspectives are merged into a unified situation analysis model for semi-automatic, automatic and manual decision support (SAM)2. The unified model can be applied to decision support systems with any degree of automation. Moreover, an extension of the proposed model is developed which can be used for discussing important concepts such as common operational picture and common situation awareness.

Surveillance of large land, air or sea areas with a multitude of sensor and sensor types typically generates huge amounts of data. Human operators trying to establish individual or collective maritime situation awareness are often overloaded by this information. In order to help them cope with this information overload, we have developed a combined methodology of data visualization, interaction and mining techniques that allows filtering out anomalous vessels, by building a model over normal behavior from which the user can detect deviations. The methodology includes a set of interactive visual representations that support the insertion of the user’s knowledge and experience in the creation, validation and continuous update of the normal model. Additionally, this paper presents a software prototype that implements the suggested methodology., Best Student Paper Award.

The surveillance of large sea areas often generates huge amounts of multidimensional data. Exploring, analyzing and finding anomalous behavior within this data is a complex task. Confident decisions upon the abnormality of a particular vessel behavior require a certain level of situation awareness that may be difficult to achieve when the operator is overloaded by the available information. Based on a visual analytics process model, we present a novel system that supports the acquisition of situation awareness and the involvement of the user in the anomaly detection process using two layers of interactive visualizations. The system uses an interactive data mining module that supports the insertion of the user's knowledge and experience in the creation, validation and continuous update of the normal model of the environment.

Founded on the Semantic Web technologies OWL and RDF, SOMWeb is an online community of practice that is used for knowledge sharing and dissemination within an oral medicine community in Sweden. It is shown how patterns for communication and collaboration within SOMWeb can be identified and represented in OWL, in terms of knowledge components, such as ontologies describing domain knowledge, user models, and organization models. It is described how patterns could be put into use and inform the design of future versions of SOMWeb.

Background: Information technology (IT) support for remote collaboration of geographically distributed communities of practice (CoP) in health care must deal with a number of sociotechnical aspects of communication within the community. In the mid-1990s, participants of the Swedish Oral Medicine Network (SOMNet) began discussing patient cases in telephone conferences. The cases were distributed prior to the conferences using PowerPoint and email. For the technical support of online CoP, Semantic Web technologies can potentially fulfill needs of knowledge reuse, data exchange, and reasoning based on ontologies. However, more research is needed on the use of Semantic Web technologies in practice. Objectives: The objectives of this research were to (1) study the communication of distributed health care professionals in oral medicine; (2) apply Semantic Web technologies to describe community data and oral medicine knowledge; (3) develop an online CoP, Swedish Oral Medicine Web (SOMWeb), centered on user-contributed case descriptions and meetings; and (4) evaluate SOMWeb and study how work practices change with IT support. Methods: Based on Java, and using the Web Ontology Language and Resource Description Framework for handling community data and oral medicine knowledge, SOMWeb was developed using a user-centered and iterative approach. For studying the work practices and evaluating the system, a mixed-method approach of interviews, observations, and a questionnaire was used. Results: By May 2008, there were 90 registered users of SOMWeb, 93 cases had been added, and 18 meetings had utilized the system. The introduction of SOMWeb has improved the structure of meetings and their discussions, and a tenfold increase in the number of participants has been observed. Users submit cases to seek advice on diagnosis or treatment, to show an unusual case, or to create discussion. Identified barriers to submitting cases are lack of time, concern about whether the case is intere

Threat evaluation is the process in which threat values are assigned to detected targets, based upon the inferred capabilities and intents of the targets to inflict damage to blue force defended assets. This is a high-level information fusion process of high importance, since the calculated threat values are used as input when blue force weapon systems are allocated to the incoming targets, a process often referred to as weapon allocation. Threat values can be calculated from a number of different parameters, such as the position of the closest point of approach (CPA) with respect to blue force defended assets, time required to reach the CPA, the target’s velocity, and its type. A number of algorithms for calculating threat values have been suggested throughout literature, however, criteria to evaluate the performance of such algorithms seem to be lacking. In this paper, we discuss different ways to assess the performance of threat evaluation algorithms. In specific, we describe how threat evaluation algorithms can be compared to each other, using a survivability criterion. Survivability is measured by running the threat evaluation algorithms on simulated scenarios and using the resulting threat values as input to a weapon allocation module. Depending on how well the threat evaluation is performed, the ability of the blue force weapon systems to eliminate the incoming targets will vary (and thereby also the survivability of the defended assets).