Towards the Edge and Beyond: The Role of Interoperability

Systemic Practice and Action Research, 2011

A rapid process of hybridisation of man and technology, organisation and technology and society and technology is currently sweeping the world. This process requires a way of (scientific) thinking that takes hybrid systems as the starting point. Such an approach makes it increasingly important for hybrid systems to be interlinked, enabling them to exchange and share information through these links. This linking of (hybrid) systems to enable them to exchange and share information can also be denoted as the realisation of interoperability between (hybrid) systems. Five principles from Luhmann's systems theory can help us understand interoperability. Interoperability enables (hybrid) systems to join random coalitions and networks. The network centric warfare concept is currently the basis for international efforts aimed at the development and application of interoperability that would enable armed forces to act effectively and efficiently. This paper demonstrates what we can learn from Luhmann's system's theory.

IEEE Communications Magazine, 2011

Command and Control Research Program, 2004

: In the information age era, there never has been a better time to reflect upon the fact that information in itself is something that has to be engineered. Since command and control is a cognitive process by which the commander gains situation awareness and proceeds to deliberated and coordinated action, one has to ask himself how raw data turns into actual information, and eventually knowledge that will trigger human understanding. Furthermore, the question arises as to how C4ISR system of systems can support this transformation process. Of course, this is no magic. Information systems do the only thing they are good at: Working on large amounts of data at incredible speed. This is where the human fails. However, data must be aggregated in such a way that it results in information that conveys operational meaning to the commander. This is where information technologies alone fail, miserably. The resulting information must capture the semantics of the commander's domain of inte...

The RUSI Journal, 1996

2001

Building flexible collaborations of different heterogeneous military units just in time is one of the key factors to perform joint and combined operations successfully. It is one of the most important prerequisites to and challenges for information systems to support these collaborations with user-adapted information to the warfighter where it is needed. For information systems, this is a requirement to adequately build federations of different and heterogeneous data and information sources on the basis of the existing data bases. This objective is only achieved by a new approach towards information sharing based on data mediation techniques which enable the configuration for different information systems towards a global information source to support military business processes across systems, nations and unit borders. One of the key factors for data mediation techniques is, that it is not an isolated technical solution to gain interoperability between different information systems, but is integrated in an overall data management process, which produces standard business objects for data exchange and standard mediation rules to configure the technical solution. In NATO, this process already has started in form of respective NATO Data Administration Group (NDAG) activities, that aims at the development of standardized data elements. Data Mediation means to establish federations of heterogeneous data sources on the basis of a common data exchange format while the data and systems itself are kept where and as they are. In other words, on the basis of the data administration and management processes the integration of legacy systems becomes possible without having to change the systems itself. This paper provides an overview of this new integration technique and its relation to already ongoing NATO activities.

2012

Creating interoperability requires that two or more people, organizations, or information technology (IT) systems use common semantic and format standards when communicating. For example, this abstract uses the grammatical format of sentences and paragraphs for a syntax standard and Webster's dictionary's terms and definitions as a semantic standard. This report explains the findings and recommendations of the Warfighter Information Technology Interoperability Standards (WITIS) Study performed by Electronic Mapping Systems, Inc., (E-MAPS) for the Software Engineering Center, US Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) on the standards available to facilitate interoperability across the IT systems developed to support Warfighters. Because many such standards are available to developers of such IT, the question is why interoperability problems persist among the Warfighter IT systems? What is missing? The study team found: first, there is no standard DoD definition of interoperability and, second, this leads to a variety of opinions by the managers and developers of IT as to whether interoperability is based on 1) just standards such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that address formatting but not semantics; 2) semantics (e.g., uniform understanding of the term fire support) and format (syntax); or 3) semantics and format plus relevant policy and procedures, registries, data architecture, and structures such as data models . The study team concluded that creating interoperability requires using the third set of elements (i.e., semantic, format [syntax], and policy and procedures). The biggest gap in creating semantic interoperability is insufficient Army and DoD policy and process on IT interoperability. Therefore, the study team recommends that, first and foremost, the IT interoperability gaps in Army and DOD policy and process be identified and closed. Additional actions should be taken to remedy shortcomings with registries and repositories, data architecture, and data models and ontology that impede IT interoperability.

"Recent experiences in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that these complex challenges cannot be resolved exclusively by military intervention, and are of such scale that no single agency, government or international organisation can manage them alone. A broad, international consensus has emerged that recognises the importance of coherent and simultaneous application of military, political, economic and civil instruments – known as ‘comprehensive approach’ – to resolve crisis situations. However, efforts to implement comprehensive approaches have been fraught with political and administrative challenges, and have suffered due to conceptual ambiguity in the understanding of collective endeavours. By analysing research on command and control, organisational science and public administration, a multi-dimensional model is proposed that can assist military, governmental and non-governmental agency leaders in understanding the practical details of interagency interoperability when working in collective endeavours. The NATO Network Enabled Capability interaction maturity model is extended, in order to understand the actual implications of increasing levels of cooperation on organisational structures and operational practices, in cross-organisational collective efforts. The implications of increasing interagency interoperability are thus revealed"

2011

A fast-paced process of hybridization of man and technology, organization and technology and society and technology is currently sweeping the world. This process requires a way of (scientific) thinking that takes hybrid systems as the starting point. This way of thinking gives hybrid systems an increasing need to be interlinked, which enables them to exchange and share information through these links. This development of linking (hybrid) systems to enable them to exchange and share information, can also be denoted as the realization of interoperability between (hybrid) systems. Five principles from Luhmann's systems theory can be of help to understand interoperability. Interoperability enables (hybrid) systems to join random coalitions and networks. The network centric warfare concept is currently the basis for international efforts for the development and application of interoperability that would enable armed forces to act effectively and efficiently. In this paper is demonstrated what Luhmann's system's theory can learn us.

Interoperability is the ability to use resources from diverse origins as if they had been designed as parts of a single system. Over time, individual interoperability problems tend to disappear as the resources involved literally become part of one system through integration and standardization, but the overall problem of interoperability itself never disappears. Instead, it simply moves up to a new level of complexity that accepts earlier integrations as a given. Interoperability is especially critical for military systems, where international politics can lead to abrupt realignments where yesterday's foe becomes today's coalition partner. This report on interoperability has five sections. The first section is an introduction to the interoperability problem, and the second section describes fundamental interoperability concepts and develops a terminology for describing interoperability issues and needs. The second section also addresses the vital issue of interoperability s...

2005

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is presently undergoing an information age transformation, one that embraces a relatively new concept known as NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC). Based primarily on the Network Centric Warfare (NCW) paradigm, the intent of the NNEC is to leverage and improve upon the quantity and quality of information made available to the warfighter-peacekeeper anytime, anywhere, i.e., upon demand. This paper examines the benefits of net-centric enablement and highlights a work in progress by the NATO Open Systems Working Group (NOSWG), of the NATO C3 Board Information Systems SubCommittee that is currently underway.