Principles for the Development of Upper Ontologies in Higher-level Information Fusion Applications

The use of ontologies within many information science communities is growing at an ever-increasing rate. This is especially true of higher-level multisource information fusion applications, where there is a genuine need for an improved understanding of the complex relational items (e.g. intentions, capabilities, opportunities and vulnerabilities) typically associated with situation and threat assessment (STA). Still, most current ontology development tools lack the resources to support the sorts of ontological distinctions necessary to provide a sufficiently scalable and reusable ontology product for STA purposes. In this paper we analyze the types of complex relations typically involved in STA ontology and discuss how these distinctions can serve as a theoretical framework for the enhancement of existing ontology development tools, especially as these relate to STA ontology.