Management and modeling of information in support of logistic M&S

The future vision of a logistic system, within the network centric defence, comprises a number of services that will support the realisation of strategic, operative and tactical goals. Within the framework of this system, LRS, TAV and M&S will play an important part, for example when planning for future combat systems or upcoming military operations. All these areas will require data of various types. Considering the ways of managing this kind of logistic data today, the prospective for successful use of the information by future logistic system is limited. The requirements on a future logistic system include the capability to automatically integrate information from multiple, heterogeneous information sources, to support consumers of information. This study aims at exploring the possibilities for integration of information from multiple, heterogeneous sources. The integration process should support automatic localisation, selection, composition and execution of services that could produce the information required by an information consuming system. The study considers the research carried out for the Semantic Web as a starting point for further explorations and describes technologies derived from this context, such as RDF (Resource Description Framework) and DAML-S (Darpa Agent Mark-up Language - Services). These technologies are expected to support ontology based Web Services that will automate and simplify the use of services on a network and help bringing heterogeneous systems together, i.e. increased interoperability.