Building up a Common Data Infrastructure

Abstract

While the value of data for an individual study effort is well understood by the analytic community at large, the aggregated worth of data is still astonishingly undervalued by many members of the Operations Research study community. Data can be described as the fundamental elements of information and knowledge that constitute the corporate whole, consequently its aggregated value, particularly when addressed in a context larger than an individual study, is significantly greater than the sum of the parts. Obtaining data is indispensable. To be effective it must be a continuous process within every study. It can be not only very time consuming, but also a very expensive factor in the total cost of a study effort. With the aggregate of available data growing with every study the situation becomes even more complex and the case for agreed-upon, community-wide data management standards and techniques is made even stronger. Without these standards the analyst's ability to find the necessary data for an individual study effort by traditional means decreases exponentially, and the ability to reuse existing data in future studies is reduced, thereby increasing the cost of data. To help the analyst face these challenges, the NATO Code of Best Practice for Assessment of Command and Control (COBP) introduced a Data Section. This section already defines the application domains of data engineering, meta data modeling, and efficient data re-use. However, the deeper value of these additional efforts, albeit a burden for the single study, especially for the initial efforts at introducing the respective techniques and tools, clearly show up when being seen in the broader context of multiple studies dealing with related topics. This paper extends the application of the COBP Data Section beyond the scope of a single study into the broadened study community domain, including other Operational Analysts, C3I System Developers, Social Scientists, etc. (15 briefing charts, 8 refs.)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2003
Accession Number
ADA425193

Entities

People

  • Andreas Tolk
  • Mark R. Sinclair

Organizations

  • Old Dominion University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Defense
  • Ballistic Missiles
  • Best Practices
  • Command And Control
  • Command And Control Systems
  • Control Systems
  • Data Management
  • Data Modeling
  • Databases
  • Engineering
  • Information Exchange
  • Infrastructure
  • Military Operations
  • Procurement
  • Reliability
  • Standards
  • Storage

Readers

  • Business Analytics
  • Economics
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control