HPKB Movement Analysis Ontology
Draft of February 9, 1998

The following summarizes the main points of the ontology developed by the Movement Analysis group participants in the second HPKB Battlespace challenge problem SME meeting. The shape of the structure given below was worked out on February 6, 1998 by Eric Domeshek, Eric Jones, John Gennari, Bill Long, myself, and the UMass representative (my apologies for forgetting the name). I've added a bit of annotation in spots, and based the following on notes taken by Bill Long and myself.

The main entities described below are sites, units, occupations (of sites by units), movements, trends, and reports. Each of these entities may have internal and external parameters.

The aim is that reports appear in the same form, whether they are system inputs given in the stream of simulated intelligence reports or system outputs given in the stream of notifications. Input reports will provide order of battle information about relevant units, information about known sites, and observations of vehicles, movements, and sites. Output reports (notifications) will mainly concern sites sites, movements, and trends. Input and output reports may be partial. Input reports typically will identify the time at which an event occurs with some precision. Output reports may start out very partial and abstract, but be followed up by refined reports of increasing detail and accuracy.

This ontology only covers most of the main points; some main points and many details may have been omitted. Some are under development by other HPKB groups.

• SITE
  This includes roads and road segments.
  • Properties
    • Location
      This may be either a point or an area.
    • Terrain character
      There is a large subvocabulary here for different terrain characteristics.
    • Number of vehicles
      This is correlated with unit strengths by the Occupation relation.
    • Improvements
      This includes revetments, drainage, etc.
    • Damage
      Alphatech is developing a vocabulary for damage descriptors.
    • Function
      • Command post
        • Tactical
        • Main
        • Rear
          Battalions don't have rear command posts, but division and corp echelons do.
      • Logistics
        • Ammo depot
        • Fuel depot
        • Food depot
        • Maintenance depot
        • Special ammo depot
          This means nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
        • Field trains
        • Combat trains
      • Assembly/staging area
      • Artillery
        • Long range
        • Multiple rocket launchers (MRL)
        • Surface to surface missles (SSM)
        • Short range
      • Land based cruise missle (LBCM)
      • Air defense artillery (ADA)
        • SAMs
        • Guns
      • Battle positions
        • Tank units
        • Mechanized units
        • Combat engineer units
      • Area of operations (AO)
      • Major Supply Route (MSR)
• OCCUPATION
  This is a relation or reified association between units and sites for periods of time.
  • Unit
  • Duration
    • Start time
    • End time
  • Site
• UNIT
  Units may be either abstract, as in doctrine, or concrete, as in units actually deployed. Concrete units will have properties that vary with time, and the needed descriptions refer to both properties holding initially of the unit and at the current (or other) time.
  • Initial
    • Order of battle (OB)
      This describes the constitution of the unit; types of vehicles, equipment, personnel, the numbers of each of these, and their command and control relationships.
    • Echelon
      For example, division, brigade, battalion, company
    • Type
      • Mechanized infantry
      • Armor
      • Infantry
      • Engineering
  • Current (Dynamic)
    • Battle position
      • Front
      • Second echelon
      • Reserve
    • Strength
      The current number of vehicles expressed as a percentage of the initial number of vehicles.
    • Mission/intent
• MOVEMENT
  Movements have three main subtypes. Any of these subtypes may exhibit the variety of properties.
  • Subtypes
    • Unit movement
      This subtype is for a unit moving in its entirety.
      • Unit in motion
    • Unit fragment
      This subtype is for a part of a unit moving on its own.
      • Parent unit
    • Non-military
  • Properties
    • Composition
      • Number vehicles by type
    • Path
      • List of sites
        • Origin
        • Intermediate sites
        • Destination
      • List of occupations
        • Start time
        • End time
        • Duration
      • Composition
    • Purpose
      • Deploy
        Put units into position
      • Displace
        Move units to new positions to avoid targeting
      • Resupply
        Bring supplies to or from deployed units
      • Tactical
        • Attack
        • Retreat
• TRENDS
  • Increasing
  • Decreasing
  • Anomalous
• REPORTS of events
  This form for reports needs to be elaborated to allow making disjunctive reports that indicate a probability distribution (or other weighting information).
  • Report time
    This is the time at which the report is issued. It normally is no earlier than the time of the event being reported. The time or duration of the event being reported will be described in a manner appropriate to the report subclass (e.g., occupations reported with a duration, unit strength reported at some particular time).
  • Subclass
    • Movement
    • Site
    • Trend
    • Occupation
    • Unit

For example:

• Unit
  • Name: 33rd
  • Type: mech
  • Echelon: brigade
  • Nominal comp (OpCom): (V.1 V.57 V.53 V.19)
  • Nominal vehicle: count
  • Actual comp (OpCon):
  • Strength: %count