Information Fusion in Monitoring Applications using the Category Model

Abstract

In many application areas similar monitoring tasks can be identified. The fundamental monitoring tasks are reported based on a technical domain analysis within different application areas. Common to most of the monitoring tasks are the recognition, surveillance, and control of objects, states and/or processes within a specific area.

Important for performing those basic tasks is the collection and processing of data coming from different sources. A typical characteristic of data acquired from different sources is the different type of data and the varying level of information. The process of combining data concerning a specific goal stated by a monitoring task is often called Data Fusion.

Here the more general term Information Fusionwill be introduced to describe the process of condensing data on varying level of information. The process of Information Fusion is based on an approach for a goal-oriented handling of information, the Category Model, which serves as the representational framework for the fundamental monitoring tasks.

Several results of this work have been performed within a cooperation with the ESPRIT-Project 5345 DIMUS (Data Integration in Multisensor Systems).