1. MSG-052 Knowledge Network for Federation Architecture and Design
Björn Löfstrand
Gunnar Öhlund
Dr. Fawzi Hassaine

2. Outline NATO RTO Organization Overview
MSG-052 Premises and Problem Description
Knowledge Network and Communities of Practice
Process and Tools
Challenges
Conclusions and Summary
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3. Civil Military NATO RTO Organization North Atlantic Council (NAC)
NATO Civilian Organisation
(CNAD)
MILITARY
COMMITTEE
The RTOs purpose is to maintain Tech lead of NATO and conduct and promote cooperative research
RTO Reports to both the military and civil parts of NATO organisation
Research & Technology Organisation
NATO Military
Organisation
MAIN
ARMAMENT
GROUPS
NIAG
INDUSTRY
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4. Research and Technology Organization (RTO)
The objective of NATO's Research & Technology Organization (RTO) is to
Support development and effective use of national defense research & technology to meet the military needs of the Alliance
Maintain a technological lead, and
Provide advice to NATO and national decision makers.
Permanent panels/groups for NATO and its nations, plus partner nations.
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5. RTO Panels and Groups Applied Vehicle Technology (AVT)
Human Factors & Medicine (HFM)
Information Systems Technology (IST)
System Analysis & Studies (SAS)
Systems Concepts & Integration (SCI)
Sensors & Electronics technology (SET)
Modelling & Simulation Group (MSG)
This slide shows the six Level II Panels and the Modelling and Simulation Group (MSG) within the RTA organisation. Each Panel deals with a different subject area and comprises National subject matter experts. The MSG is designated a Group rather than a Panel to signify that the Group primarily deals with the application of M&S research.
Modelling and Simulation Group Terms Of Reference
The Mission of the NATO Modelling and Simulation (M&S) Group (NMSG) is to promote co-operation among Alliance bodies, NATO Member Nations and PfP Nations to maximise the effective utilisation of M&S.
Primary mission areas include M&S standardisation, education, and associated science and technology. The Group will provide M&S expertise in support of the tasks and projects within the RTO and from other NATO organisations.
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6. NATO Modelling and Simulation Group (NMSG)
The mission of the NMSG is to promote cooperation among Alliance bodies, NATO member nations and Partner nations to maximise the effective utilisation of M&S.
Primary mission areas include: M&S standardisation, education, and associated science and technology.
The group will provide M&S expertise in support of the tasks and projects within the RTO and from other NATO bodies.
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7. MSG-052 Participation and Organization
NATO RTO
NMSG
MSG-052 Management Group
Federation Architecture and Design CoP
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8. MSG-052 Premises
Knowledge of “good design” is gained through hands-on experience, trial-and-error and experimentation. Architecture and design issues are continuously being addressed during federation development.
Common “proven” architectural and design principles or design patterns can be reused and applied when building new federations. This will increase compatibility, performance, stability and interoperability between systems.
There is no real lack of experience in the field. This type of knowledge is, however, seldom reused and rarely shared in an effective manner
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9. Problem
Expert knowledge of federation architecture and design is not readily available
Knowledge is limited to the few expert practitioners and not available to the wider M&S community
Lack of characterization and description of common federation architecture and design issues and solutions
Lack of coordination/harmonization and standardization of federation architecture and design patterns
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10. FEDEP and LCIM 6 5 4 3 1
Perform Conceptual Analysis 2
Analyze Data and Evaluate Results 7
Define Federation Objectives
Design Federation
Develop Federation
Plan,
Integrate, and Test Federation
Execute Federation and Prepare Outputs
Conceptual Level (common understanding of information)
Pragmatic/Dynamic Level (common use of information)
Semantic Level (information exchange)
Syntactic Level (data exchange)
Technical Level (IP)
Le vels of interoperability
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11. MSG-052 Objectives
Main Objective
Initiate a Knowledge Network for Federation Architecture and Design
Sub-objective 3
Document and share knowledge, via a Knowledge Base, and with the modeling and simulation community in general
Sub-objective 2
Organize specialist Workshops where information about federation architecture- and design issues/solutions are discussed and when needed followed by experimentation.
Sub-objective 1
Establish a Community of Practice, consisting of federation development experts from NATO and NATO/PfP nations
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12. This is NOT a Community of Interest !
Community of Practice
A Community of Practice (CoP) is group of people who share similar goals and interests. In pursuit of these goals and interests, they employ common practices, work with the same tools and express themselves in a common language. Through such common activity, they come to hold similar beliefs and value systems.
MSG-052 Federation Architecture and Design CoP
The CoP we are establishing within MSG-052 is focused on Federation Architecture and Design. Common practices, solutions and standards for designing federated systems are of shared interest.
Currently membership is by appointment only. The national/org. representative in the MSG-052 Management Group can appoint members to this CoP by requesting that individuals are added as users of this workspace.
As a member of this CoP you must contribute!
This is NOT a Community of Interest !
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13. CoP Dimensions
There must be a series of connections that individuals have to others. In other words, individuals must perceive themselves to be part of a network (structural dimension).
A sense of trust must be developed across these connections (relational dimension).
The members of the network must have a common interest or share a common understanding of issues facing the organization (the cognitive dimension).
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14. MSG-052 CoP Main Tasks
Identify, Categorize and Describe Architecture and Design Issues
Prioritize Architecture and Design Issues
Identify and Describe Common Solutions to Prioritized Issues
Provide input to improve the way the CoP operates including feedback on supporting tools & processes
Document result from Workshops
Report to Management Group
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15. Process We are HERE! 07F-SIW-024 Generate National/Org Input
on WS Topic
Workshop
Management
Meeting
Management
Meeting
We are HERE!
Example Outline - Input
Issue Description
Issue Breakdown
Terminology/Definitions
Approaches and General Solution Patterns
Proposals
Current/Future solutions
Engineering Support, Examples, Use Cases
Finalisation/ Experimentation T
T+4w
T+12w
T+18w
T+24w
Workshop
Topic #2
Engage Experts
Management
Meeting
CWE
Decide on Topic for next WS
Decide on WS results
Decide on Experimentation
Decide Topic for next WS
Knowledge Base
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16. Federation Architecture and Design Topics
Federation Management Topic
Fault Tolerance Topic
Federation Configuration Topic
Federation Execution Control Topic
Federation Execution Monitoring Topic
Federation Test Topic
Scenario Management Topic
Scenario Configuration Management Topic
Scenario Generation Topic
Scenario Allocation Topic
Scenario Initialization Topic
Scenario Execution Control Issue
Execution Evaluation Topic
Data Collection Topic
Data Logging Topic
Common Natural Environment Topic
Visualization Topic
Federation Agility Topic
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17. 07F-SIW-024

18. 1st Workshop February 2007 Stocholm Sweden 30+ participants
Workshop Topics
Federation Agreement
Federation Agility
Taxonomy of Federation Architecture and Design Issues
Federation and Scenario Management
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19. 2nd Workshop September 2007 Suffolk VA, USA 20+ participants
Workshop topics
LVCAR (joint workshop)
Federation Management
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20. Workshop (upcoming) 3rd Workshop March 3-7 2008 The Hauge, Netherlands
Main Topics
Federation Execution Control
Federation Agreements
Experimentation Planning
4th Workshop
Nov (prelininary)
Portsmouth, UK
Experimentation
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21. Collaborative Working Environment
Wiki-based solution
Collaborative Writing
Peer-review
Threaded commenting
Page attachments/uploads
Hyperlinking and text search
Confluence Enterprise Wiki
Webbased
Advanced user rights management
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22. CWE Issues Who is the author?
What happens if someone deletes what I have written?
What if we do not agree? Arbitration ?
Code of conduct
Moderated vs unmoderated discussions?
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23. CoP Member Statistics Metric Count Total number of CoP members 50
Total number of Countries/Organizations represented in CoP 9
Total number of Companies/Organizations represented in CoP 34
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24. Challenges Cultural Changes
from a top-down team-oriented approach to a bottom-up community approach
unfinished thoughts and ideas are reluctantly shared
Knowledge representation
Highly structured documentation and repositories vs. wiki based free text representation
Some structure is needed. How much ?
IPR and Publication
NATO and NATO/PfP
Releasability to wider M&S community
How to apply the NMSG-SISO TCA
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25. Conclusions
MSG-052 does not produce standards, nor does it recommend practices in SISO terms.
MSG-052 attempts to establish a community and forum where experts on Federation Architecture and Design join to meet, discuss and share lessons learned.
MSG-052 encourages the members of the CoP to engage in bringing some of the results from our work to SISO as papers (2 papers at this Fall SIW) and study groups.
Once a topic gains enough consensus within the CoP the time might also be right to start standardization efforts.
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26. Your MSG-052 Management Group Representative
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27. QUESTIONS