Sensor tasking A natural interaction occurs between the interpretation of sensor data and the tasking of sensors in response. Knowledge of the tasking informs the interpretation of the results. Some parts of the battlesphere will be unambigiously revealed by the current sensor arrangement. Other parts of the battlesphere will not provide such good information: perhaps we simply had insufficient sensor platforms, or perhaps we only now recognize that some region is of interest, maybe because we observed a target pass into it. The abductive inference system can detect when an important question is not being properly resolved, and when other questions are already adequately answered. Thus, the state of the inference is a good guide to how to reconfigure sensors: it can dynamically calculate the value of different possible pieces of evidence based on what it now needs to know. So, it makes sense to closely integrate data interpretation with sensor asset planning so that sensors can be directed in accordance with current information needs. Our technology allows responsive sensor system control to be achieved.

Disposition of sensors Choosing locations or search paths for sensor platforms, and configuring and aligning them, involves difficult tradeoff decisions. Some modern sensor systems are very configurable, allowing a large range of options of how to allocate the finite resource that they offer. Our approach to supporting the decision-maker is to generate a large range of possible arrangements of the available sensor assets, and to evaluate them with respect to representative scenarios of interest to see how well they perform. The user is then presented with the tradeoffs among the best options for arranging the sensor system, rated by how well they perform in the face of various contingencies, using our multi-criterion decision making software.