Bridging the Gap between Information Need and Information Acquisition

In this article, we address the rarely discussed problem of connecting high-level information (e.g., aggregated states and enemy intentions) to information acquisition. Our approach is to partition the transition of information need to sensor management into a set of comprehensible entities (information types and functions), which we present in a framework. The framework is stepwise (sequential) and first translates actual information (from the data and information fusion process) to information need. The information need is mapped to the task space by a task management function which performs prioritization with respect to information need. A further step includes projection of tasks to service space by an allocation scheme, and finally services give orders to resources. In the terminology of the framework, we discuss the extension of a previous study (that involved plan recognition) with a sensor management function.