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This paper discusses some of the techniques developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for information fusion of lidar-based biological standoff sensors, meteorology, point sensors, and potentially other information sources, for biodefense applications. The developed Spatiotemporal Coherence (STC) fusion approach includes phenomenology aspects and approximate uncertainty measures for information corroboration quantification. A supervised machine-learning approach was also developed. Computational experiments involved ground-truth data generated from measurements and by simulation techniques that were developed. The fusion results include performance measures that focus explicitly on the fusion algorithms' effectiveness. Both fusion approaches enable significant false-alarm reduction. Their respective advantages and tradeoffs are examined.

This paper discusses selected aspects of an MIT Lincoln Laboratory effort developing information fusion techniques for biodefense decision-support tasks, involving biological standoff (lidar - light detection and ranging) sensors, meteorology, as well as point sensors and potentially other battlespace sensing and contextual information. The Spatiotemporal Coherence (STC) fusion approach developed in this effort combines phenomenology aspects with approximate uncertainty measures to quantify corroboration between the information elements. The results indicate that STC can significantly reduce false alarm rates. Meandering Plume and Background Simulation is one of two techniques developed for ground-truth data generation. Beyond the detection realm, developed techniques include information-fusion based plume mapping and propagation prediction.

Information fusion aims at a synergistic exploitation of multiple information sources, to enable decision-making or to enhance its performance. The sources include sensors of various modalities and characteristics, as well as sources which are not sensors. We discuss the challenges of information fusion, technical directions and approaches that can cope with those challenges, and the opportunities those approaches enable. Several research and development efforts conducted at MIT Lincoln Laboratory over the recent years in the area of information fusion for chemical-biological defense serve as the backdrop for that discussion., National Science Foundation (Grant No. 0329901), United States. Dept. of the Air Force (Air Force Contract FA8721-05-C-0002)