Towards Characterizing Distributed Complex Situation Assessment as Workflows in Loosely Coupled Systems

This paper introduces challenges in contemporary situation assessment using collaborative inference and discusses solutions that are based on workflows between distributed processing nodes. The paper exposes the necessary conditions that workflows have to satisfy in order to support accurate situation assessment and provides a systematic approach to verification of the workflows. In particular, we emphasize the link between the complexity of the domain and the complexity of the workflows in terms of data and control coupling. With the help of graphical representations, we characterize the complexity of the domains and identify critical relations that have to be captured by collaborating processes in a workflow supporting correct situation assessment.