Data Fusion Support to Activity-Based Intelligence

I cannot recommend this book highly enough; Fusion is an immature discipline and there have been several important books on the topic over the years. However, this one truly breaks new ground establishing new foundational theories for how we can deal with and combine soft data and information such as text and HUMAN reports with traditional measurements also known as hard data. These new concepts are coupled with the practicality of system capabilities and functioning prototypes based on the new theoretical foundations. The book provides truly unique and workable series of fusion services which going forward will be a great benefit to practitioners and developers who need them in their daily jobs and in the development of systems to support the analysts and decision makers. Further, because it is so accessible and readable many of the generalists and analysts who may have been frightened off by the dense mathematical nature of so many fusion tomes can gain much from this book. I recommend this book to all specialists but also to a much broader audience who can benefit from the seminal work presented in its pages. –Franklin E. White, Contract Engineer, MITRE Corp.

Richard Antony’s new book on Data Fusion Support to Activity-Based Intelligence is a welcome addition to the data fusion literature. Antony, well known for his contributions to multi-sensor data fusion, and author of the 1995 text, Principles of Data Fusion Automation, is a clear domain expert regarding data, inferences, decision processes, and utilization of data fusion systems for military applications. While a number of existing texts provide details on target tracking, signal processing, pattern recognition and data fusion mathematics and algorithms, virtually none exhibit the domain expertise provided by Antony. Antony s previous text set the stage for development of automated processes for information fusion by identifying key types of information and knowledge needed for situation awareness and threat refinement. The new text provides further insight into these areas, particularly as they apply to the modern challenge of activity based intelligence (ABI). Antony describes the foundational information theory of ABI including the fundamental types of data, inferences sought, reasoning logic, and the mapping from sensor data to semantic level representations of situations. The book introduces a prototype system for context and fusion support and uses this prototype to explore high level reasoning and special functions such as high value entity discovery, exploring the characteristics and relationships between complex entities and the development of special information filters and alert functions. The book illustrates clearly the value of linking physical sensor data with human observations and context-based knowledge. His two chapters on spatial reasoning and temporal reasoning are of special value. Overall, I would strongly recommend this clearly written and insightful text. –David L. Hall, College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University