Context and Fusion: Definitions, Terminology

This chapter attempts to cover two topics which themselves are complex and multidisciplinary: the concept of “Context” and the concept of “Information Fusion”, both of which have long histories of research publications. This chapter thus attempts to provide the reader concise introductions to these two topics by providing a review of an established framework for data and information fusion that derives from the well-known functional model of the fusion process called the Joint Directors of Laboratories or JDL model of fusion. The latter part of the chapter introduces two frameworks for how information fusion and contextual information can possibly be joined together that would allow for improved exploitation and inferencing in a variety of applications; these frameworks should be viewed as suggestions of notional processing concepts for these purposes. The chapter also provides numerous references for the reader to follow up and explore any of the ideas offered herein.